(no subject)
All the way to the door I could hear him whispering to himself, "Stay strong and don’t look back…it’s for the best you know." But in my heart I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t take it, seeing him just walk away from me, it was tearing me up inside. There are so many things I wanted to say to him as he drifted closer to the path out of my life, but I was tongue-tied. "I’m not ready to let you go, I need you!" that’s what came out…and then he stopped. For a second I was relieved, only thinking that I had said that right thing and that he was staying, but I was foolish. I knew deep down that he was only holding back the tears that came with hearing something out loud that you have said so many times in your head, but ignored. He wanted to stay, I knew that as well as the next person, but he just couldn’t…there was no way it would work. In that silence, that 10 seconds were our breathing had died, I heard it. It was the faint sound of my heart breaking in the final realization that it was over - he was really going away this time…for good.
Just like everyone else, we too, had our fair share of problems, but for the most part every moment I was with him, waking or not, was Heaven. He was the reason I breathed, he was everything that I woke up for in the morning and dreamt about at night. But there were just demons inside of me that neither he nor I could get rid of and he, seeing me struggle every day, grew weak as well. I hated myself for doing that to him, putting him through it, but he always said, "that’s what lovers are for…the good and the bad, the ecstasy and the agony." But after years of it, he just couldn’t take anymore and that’s when he decided to go. He wrote me a note one night, as he lay awake in bed crying about what he knew he had to do…
I can’t help you anymore, there’s nothing left to say. My heart bleeds for you and everyday I’ll grow a little stronger in letting you go…knowing…it’s for our own goods.
Now coming out of the dream-like state of remembering what lead us up to this very point in time, I moved forward reaching out for his arm. "Please, don’t make this harder then it is. Leaving you will be the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do…so please…just let me go." But I just couldn’t. My eyes were crowded with tears so I blinked and the small, transparent globes fell to the floor, forming a puddle that was quickly absorbed by the carpet. I could feel the chill of the night air on my face as he opened the door and stepped out into the cold, cruel world. Everything just seemed so peaceful so protected inside the house that we had made our home. The moon was out and oh what a solemn and morose moon it was! Like it knew that there was a great tragedy going on right in its midst and each and every star that hung mournfully in the sky was a silvery tear it was shedding for us. The stillness of the night was eerie, then all at once the wind stopped, waiting in anticipation of who would speak next. It wouldn’t be waiting long. "I wouldn’t trade this for anything. I just wish I didn’t have to go, but I will never regret the time I spent with you, just the fact that there was so little of it." Then why can’t you stay! Make it longer, I can change if it means keeping you. I will subdue those voices that have bothered us for so long! And with those words echoing in my head I knew I couldn’t say them aloud. So I didn’t. Just then he turned and I could see the tears in his eyes and the stains from past tears shed. He gently leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I grabbed him and held him as if my life depended on it, but in a way it did. I couldn’t see myself going on without him he was the blood that ran through my veins.
He whispered for me to let him go, that he had to leave now or else, he feared, he would lose his nerve and stay. "But don’t you see, that’s what I want." The selfishness in my tone repulsed me, and I let go. So in a mass of headlights, car sounds and one final "I love you" mouthed through a rolled up window…he was gone. I just sort of stood there for a few minutes, actually I’m not too sure how long it was. I know that there were no tears - I was too shocked to cry. I could feel the whole of my being caving in one me, from the inside out. Starting where the broken pieces of my heart were and working itself around my entire insides. When I went back in the house I laid down on the floor, eyes shut, inhaling and exhaling through my nose. I awoke to the somber light of the sun streaming in through my window. It really happened. He is gone. Oh what a time for it to not be a dream! That’s all I could think as I moved franticly around the house not knowing what to do with myself. There he was - everywhere and nowhere - calling out to me to find him, knowing I never would because he was gone.
I saw the blade sitting on the bathroom sink shimmering in the glow of the early morning light. I picked it up it seemed my only companion. I sat on the floor looking at my virgin wrists, free from any blemishes of razors or childhood mishaps. Then in disgust I threw it in the toilet. How had a fallen so far? If he had seen me then he would have been just as repulsed as I was. No, taking my life was not the answer, but what was? I didn’t know. Those voices, those inner demons were making me think of things I had buried so deep into myself I thought they would never resurrect. The only thing keeping them from taking complete and total control of me was him and now with him gone there was nothing stopping them. Again, I don’t know how long I sat on that bathroom floor for I had lost all concept of time, but when I finally got up the realization had set in and in my weakness I collapsed to the floor again.
This time I was crying, uncontrollably. The misery seemed to ooze out of every pore and didn’t feel like it was ever going to stop. "I could have started a flood in that bathroom," I said to myself when I was finally drained, but still sniffling, and standing in the hallway. I found my way to the couch and I curled up with the blanket we had gotten on our vacation and I stayed that way for the better part of two days. I was a wretched excuse for a human being, feeling sorry for myself in every possible way. When I finally got up I went to the bathroom and to wash my face. As I slowly lifted my head and looked at my reflection in the mirror, there he was behind me looking as though he had just found me after a rigorous game of hide and go seek. But when I turned around, as I feared, he wasn’t there. Damn mirages. I listened at the deafening silence that was all around me. All I could think of was that stanza from the poem he had written while we were arguing last week: Make me want to forget that I’m drowning, make me want to live. Because right now I don’t see the purpose in trying and the Angel he’s calling my name. Indeed the Angel was calling my name, but I knew he wouldn’t want me to answer him, he would feel eternally guilty and my soul in the after life would be aggrieved forever knowing I had caused him additional pain.
So I sat there drowning in my own thoughts. I could go see him. I could call him. NO you mustn’t! No I couldn’t what would I do, what would I say. No he wouldn’t want to see or hear from me…well at least not for awhile. I couldn’t just think of myself here, there was always him too. I could see him sitting there just as distraught as I was, probably thinking the same things I was. I knew deep down if he could have stayed he would have, but I also knew he couldn’t and I couldn’t keep him any longer, my problems were tearing him up on the inside.
Its been a few months now and I still cry myself to sleep some nights. I’ve seen him around sometimes we both notice each other, but we leave it at that. It would pain us both too much to make any efforts to be friends at this point…our wounds still fresh. When we hit our one-year anniversary we made a fire…we burned everything negative from our pasts and saved the ashes in a ceramic vase. It served as sort of a reminder of the new life we were making together and how a lifetime of bad things could be condensed into a small pile of dust and kept sealed away. Now as I stand at the bank of the river that we visited so many times I finger the seal of that vase. I feel a slow, solitary tears trickle down my cheek. This is the right thing to do you know. I’m sure of it. I placed the vase in slow moving current and watched as the river slowly took away everything bad thing in my life. (Minutes before I had burned the piece of paper that he was parked on top of that night…he left tire marks on it. It was the symbol of him leaving me and was the worst thing that happened to me so, like a ritual, I burned it and put its ashes in the vase). The sun was setting as a watched that vase final leave my line of vision. "You are strong. You will live and this, this was the first step to breathing again." I said this to out loud to myself as I walked back to my car. As I turned the key in the ignition the radio came to life "I let go, but there’s just no one that gets me like you do, you are my only my only one." Yellowcard’s "Only One" was playing in my c.d. player. Figures, that’s what you get when you put the c.d. on shuffle…destiny gives you what you need to hear.
The drive home was lonely, as was the drive to the river. But I felt a weight lifted off of me. The last tear I would cry for years over him came to my face then, silvery and warm on my face, as I passed on the bridge where we had first said we would be together forever…and we will, in one way or another, my dear…we will.