Lausanne Epilogue

Some mornings I wake before the alarm. The dog lifts her head, watches me for a second, then exhales and settles back into herself. I sit there in the half-light, mug warm in my hands, feeling like a lighthouse with no ships.

I haven’t drunk in almost eighteen months. Not properly. A few slips, but nothing disastrous. I go to therapy. I don’t say much in the sessions — just enough to keep going back. Jo says it helps, and maybe it does. At least I’m not shouting at radiators or crying into tea towels.

But some part of me is still there. In Geneva. Back when I thought I was following some grand, tragic romance. That she was the one. That it was destiny, or fate, or something equally ridiculous.

I wrecked my marriage for that dream. Left a wife who still loved me. Let my kids look at me like I was a stranger. And for what? A few weeks of uneasy bliss and a dawning horror that we were two different people, orbiting different planets. The things I once found mysterious about her became maddening. Her mournfulness. That sideways laugh. The way she asked questions that sounded like accusations. I thought I was diving into deep water. It turned out to be a puddle reflecting my own delusion.

Even then, I didn’t want to let go. Not really. There’s comfort in longing. In yearning. In loving someone who doesn’t want you back. I think I’ve always preferred the chase to the keeping. The absence to the presence. Maybe I was raised that way — to believe that love must be withheld, earned, rarely given and never fully yours.

So when I looked her up a few weeks ago, it wasn’t out of hope. It was habit. Something to feel. She’d died. A line on a memorial site. MS, complications, whatever that means.

I stared at the screen for a long time. Not weeping. Not really sad. Just... hollow. Like a room where something had been taken out.

Jo came in and asked what I was reading. I told her it was nothing. She knows not to press.

She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And somehow, I still sometimes look out the window and wonder where else I might be. With who. Doing what.

Maybe that’s the most honest I can be. That some people aren’t built for contentment. That for some of us, love isn’t a destination — it’s a mirage we keep walking toward because we’re afraid of what we’ll see when we stop.