Us.
Iâm trying to write, write anything at all. They say to write what you know, but all I know is him and I canât bring myself to write another fucking word. I want to tell someone everything, I want them to be horrified so I can feel validated. I want someone else to get angry for me so I can stop holding it by myself for a while.
I fell in love. I fell in love between bedsheets and stolen glances. In the coffee carefully placed on my desk and those quiet elevator rides. I fell in love with moments I was never able to tell anyone about, I fell in love when I wasnât supposed to. He could make me laugh when I didnât know how to make myself laugh anymore and I gravitated towards him because he made the weight in my chest disappear. I felt like I could float out into the universe, weightless and free.
I was always afraid of him, of what I felt for him and he knew it. At first I didnât let him in, I wasnât ready to open myself up, I wasnât ready to be hurt again. All I wanted to do was explore the universes behind his eyes, I wondered what secrets there were in those dark blue galaxies. But with an evening of loaded glances and whispers in dark hallways I trusted him and suddenly he knew everything about me.
He knew about the days I couldnât get out of bed, even when I blamed it on a stomach bug. He knew about the pointless poems scrawled on paper that littered my bedroom. He knew that I couldnât fall asleep in silence because I was afraid of the night. He knew how I loved the smell of rain on hot concrete and the ticklish spot just above my pelvic bone. He said that he could see the sadness in my eyes.
I never stopped being afraid of him.
I want to ask him so many things. Like do you remember that night? That night, when the air was too cold so we got in the car and fogged up the windows. The night was a quiet kind of peaceful, like after it rains. We sat in our seats, leaned back and watched as headlights made the windows glow and played lights across each others faces. It didnât last forever, nothing ever does. But it was enough for that night. I go back to that night all the time, does he?
âHurt me more, I dare you.â I spit like venom into the void where we had once been
âIâm sorry.â He says but I donât believe believe him.
My hand traces along his name in my cell phone, I type out emails and messages over and over again that I canât bring myself to send. I want to hear his voice. I used to have the back of his hand memorised like a map that would point me home, now I canât find my way. Maybe he was the love of my life, and I just wasnât his.
It is so hard to hate him after loving him for so long and missing him comes in waves and tonight it has been a tsunami. Our silence has probably been the worst part of it all, because how could he fall out of love with me and into love with another so fast? And I know that I am not easy to love, I have sharp edges and missing parts. I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
It hurt too much, at first I thought I would never be able to put it to pen but then the fiery passion that was loss faded to the dull aching I have grown to know all too well. Itâs an emptiness impossible to describe without pointing to another piece of emptiness.
I still feel his lips on my neck, but all that is left is coffee stains and bitter tears. He left my life so loudly my head is still ringing and I know we were never together, but he ruined me. I went back to those bedsheets where we fell in love, I could feel my heart crushing under the weight of the memories. Even though I know how this story ends, Iâm still hoping that in the end it will be me and him.
I was so scared of what I felt for him, I was so scared of what he could do to me. What he did do to me. I see a little piece of him in everyone that I meet now, but Iâm not afraid of what I might feel for them. Because now I only have one fear now, that he has none.