The door is ajar again tonight. From my solitary bed, the faint crack fills with my husband’s breathing, clinging like a shadow. When the axe-in-the-womb pain tilts the room, he slips nothing more than trembling fingertips through the gap.
I hurt so much I think I’ll die. So… just my hand, please, just hold my hand.
If I turned my head, I would see him. Instead I close my eyes. From the moment I learned the ugly word endometriosis, I mastered a new way of begging for his touch.
The man standing at the shaking doorknob
What stabs deepest is not the pain itself but being its counterpart. Each night when something tears inside me, my husband lifts only the tips of his fingers in the open seam. They quiver, then freeze—afraid that touching me will hurt me further, that embracing me will shatter me. We have learned to live by avoiding each other, strangers under the name of spouses.
How can a person hurt this much?
His whisper coils around the room. I do not open my eyes; if I did, I would see how haggard he has become, how my pain has settled on his back like a second spine.
The shape of desire learned from a sick body
My mother lied: When you marry, your husband will nurse you when you’re ill. The truth is this—my husband’s hands no longer rest on my body. He knows I am sick, and that knowledge keeps him at a distance. I know why he cannot step closer: because if I suffer, guilt will kill him. A new desire rises with the pain—my pain jolts him awake; my thrashing drives him to the door. So I grow sicker, knowing pain has become our final thread.
Eun-ji and her husband, or “lovers at the door”
Every Wednesday Eun-ji visits the hospital. A cyst has sprouted on her ovary. Early last year she told Min-su, “It’s fine, I can go alone.” So Min-su went to work. When she miscarried in the waiting room, she did not call. She came home, lay on the bed. That night Min-su cracked the door.
– Eun-ja… are you all right? – …Min-su, just your hand… for a second.
Since then, Min-su paces daily outside the door. The more Eun-ji hurts, the more she listens for his footsteps. They have already abandoned sex, embraces, even morning greetings. Only trembling fingertips knock through the gap.
When I think I’m dying, let me feel that you’re still alive.
The “wild-goose father,” or love mediated by illness
Kyung-hun has spent three years on distant assignments. When his wife Soo-jin was diagnosed with uterine cancer, he received an overseas posting. Under the banner of for the family, he lives far away. Soo-jin endures chemo alone, vomits alone, shaves her head alone. Each night Kyung-hun video-calls.
– Did it hurt today? – Yes… I thought I would die. – …Show me your hand.
On the screen appears her hand—chemo-twisted nails, blackened veins. Kyung-hun weeps at the sight. They no longer kiss, no longer hold hands. Yet if Soo-jin fails to say it hurts, Kyung-hun cannot endure the day. His desire now depends on her pain; without it, their last connection would snap.
The psychology of desire: pain makes us burn hottest
At the altar we vowed: In health and in sickness. No one warned us that the healthier one becomes a sinner. Guilt births desire; if I am well while you suffer, I carry the crime of being unable to cure you. So we avoid each other, believing silence lessens guilt.
But desire begins there. Without pain, we stop needing each other; love becomes routine. Only when someone aches as though death were near do we feel alive. Pain ignites us. Without pain, there is neither love nor desire.
Are you standing at the door?
I still feel the door ajar. My husband will be there. The closer I come to death’s edge, the less he can approach. Yet I know he is exhausted from wanting to extend even one fingertip. Pain torments us, but it also binds us.
So I still wait for his trembling hand.
I hurt as though dying, yet without that hand I would die more.
Is it the same for you? When pain is deepest, only a single touch keeps you alive.