We walked down the path, not touching one another, except for once in a while, when one of us (usually me) would get a little off balance.  The dog behaved well, we said hello to other walkers, moved out of the way of bicyclists, and once in a while we spoke.

There's always been heavy air around us wherever we are, even walking down a breezy fall pathway filled with color.  It's the heaviness of the unspoken but understood that, I think, makes us both kind of sad.  I mused at the bright yellow leaves that had been plastered to the asphalt by the rain, noticed some pretty purple wildflowers, which I pointed out to him, and tried to tease a little, to lighten the air.

The air is heaviest in bed, where we are lying so close, yet so very far away from each other, knowing the temporal nature of our comfort with one another.  Even with the heaviness though, we must both somehow justify the risk or we wouldn't be there.

It gets to me though...the heaviness, I suppose because I know the heaviness of loss so well.  I know that losing someone doesn't lighten your burden in life, it adds to it and I've had so much loss that it has become my biggest fear that I won't make it through another one.  What if the next one is the last straw and I lose my mind--end up in an institution playing with dolls and calling everyone I see "Naomi".  I knew someone who did that once.

I'm a smart girl.  I know stuff.  I know nothing about relationships, friendships, whatever, that are by design, temporary from the get-go.  Even at summer camp when you left, you promised to keep in touch with that best friend or that boy you met and kissed behind the pool when no one else was around.  Even then, when you knew you'd lose touch, in the time you spent together, you were together--you were a team--friends to the end!  So I don't get the "for now" attitude, unless you're the kind of person who doesn't emotionally attach to others.

And the thought of that makes me feel like the air is super heavy.  Hard to breathe even, to think of someone who is unable to attach to anyone at all on a meaningful level.  On a level where you want to give as much or more than you get from the other person, and on a level where you don't even want to think about the day when things change or end, or loss comes knocking at your door.  And it makes the air heavy because I'm afraid I'm the only person left who values such things anymore.  Surely someone is out there who thinks having a pair of arms to come home to is more valuable than the largest plasma TV you can buy for your living room, or a brand new truck, or...whatever...But he is sure hard to find if he exists--and isn't a psycho of some variety.

We walked back to the car faster than we walked away from it.  I could barely keep up and I felt embarrassed because of that, because I used to walk faster than him.  I kept up though and we made it back, hot and tired and a little irritable for some reason.  The dog was too excited, and we were arguing a little about another one of those insignificant things that's really meaningless in the long run.  Things settled down though, and we eventually made ourselves comfortable in the heaviness around us and made the most of the moments we shared.

To me, the heaviness is almost too much to carry, and to him, I don't think it's worth hanging onto.  So, I suppose we are both on the cusp of letting it go--the heaviness and each other.  It will be a relief to be rid of one burden, but with the other loss, comes a new burden of its own for me, and I hope I can bear it.