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Irony
by Ilana
You have a knack for love but not devotion. It's not that you fall out of love; you just fall in love with someone else and forget to pay attention. You forget to be the attentive boyfriend or husband or whatever you are at the time, and sooner or later your girlfriend of wife or whatever she is gets fed up and ends it. It always hurts because you still love her, whoever she is, but it's stopped surprising you, and it doesn't keep you from doing the same thing the next time around.
You don't know why he's so much easier to stick with than anyone else. Maybe it's because you couldn't hurt his feelings if you tried (not that you ever do that on purpose). Maybe it's because he doesn't want anything from you except to snark back at him and maybe ask if he's okay once or twice a year, just so he knows someone cares.
Maybe it's because you know he can't leave because he has no one else. He might think he doesn't need anyone, but no man is an island, however much he wishes he were (a deserted island in the middle of a vast ocean with terrible storms that kill anyone who tries to cross it).
You need him too, in a way. He's a constant, always there to distract you from your latest romantic fiasco, or else from the mother of three with stage four breast cancer or the seven year-old boy with an inoperable brain tumor. You wouldn't have become an oncologist if you couldn't deal with those things, but it might get overwhelming sometimes if you didn't have him to make you smile.
You sometimes think that you could love him, which is ludicrous because he's everything you never fall for: older, bitter, angry and, oh, yes, male. But there's something indefinable about him that sparks something in you, whether you understand it or not. It doesn't matter, though, because you won't let it happen. You delude yourself more often than not, but you know your pattern. You know that if you ever let yourself fall, you'd destroy the one relationship that's never failed you, and there would be no one left to pick up the pieces, so you won't do it.
It's barely a conscious thing, and most of the time you forget about it. But every so often the thought pops into your head and you think it must be some kind of irony that the one person you know how to be devoted to is the only person you can't let yourself love.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of Fox Television, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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