Only
I always knew that running was useless, so I waited. And I will continue to wait for as long as it takes.
This is not a goodbye letter.
-
You need to understand is that he was not always here.
Unreliable, sometimes his pupils were dilated, other times red. As much as I delude myself by saying that if I had known where we would end up, I would have done differently. I know this is a lie. If you knew him, you would see how tempting he was.
At some point, he just was, and I took him in like a wounded animal because his pain became as big as mine. With every shortened breath he took, with the smoke billowing out of his frozen lungs, I was a little less myself. No one would have saved him if I hadn’t, and I would have given everything I was to stop him from ever being.
And I let him feel me, dive into my guts, know every unexplored corner of my body, and be the screams in the early morning hours that told me to give up. I let him follow me, tried to show him how each day was worse than the last and that we would get nowhere, but he didn’t seem to care. It was what he wanted.
He fed off my torments and wanted to fuck with my lips until I could no longer speak. He wanted someone to blame, just a victim to dig his claws into and pull the strings of. And I was grateful to accept, letting him change every view to make the world fit the twisted narrative he whispered. He wanted to blame, he wanted to tear, and he wanted to destroy. I never minded being his victim, because, you see, I like to be diminished, and after a while, it seemed to be my place.
He was no good to himself, and foolish was I to think he was worth any salvation. Who among us is? He talked about how he didn’t need me, and I could hear his voice crumbling through my bruised vocal cords. The more he told me to stay away, the more his strength diminished, and he knew that we never really needed each other. I let his cries exist only inside my head for fear of taking him away from me.
Sometimes he wasn’t, and there was no reason for him to stay either. The sound of the clock was torturing, each ticking seeming to laugh at me for continuing to wait, even though I knew that all the bottles I turned would not fill the void. And after long enough, I understood that he wasn’t coming because he was depriving himself of everything that had ever threatened him. I realized how good that felt: not existing, and it didn’t take long for me to do the same. We understood it was not possible to die if we were together, and I couldn’t let go anymore. I could no longer stand being trapped inside the little bubble outside the universe we had created, and it was too late to get out of it. He knew that wandering into the void was still better than staying there, but he no longer held my hand when I threatened to take a step towards the abyss.
Perhaps it was my greatest sin to let him continue with the blade at my neck, asking him to take me with him wherever he went and trusting that his thirst would be less than the will to get there.
He hid all the truths about life from me as we danced through our little death. And every time he finished me off, I couldn’t wait for more. He was the adrenaline rush that was always missing inside me, keeping me warm by covering me with his pain. Even without tasting it for too long, I had already become much more addicted than I thought possible. Maybe I was becoming him.
He was coming and going. And knowing that it was better when he was gone, didn’t stop me from looking forward to his return more than tomorrow.
He kept squeezing my throat when I said I wanted to be there. I came to appreciate not being able to feel because then I could no longer be alone, and he would murmur his words through my mouth. In the same way that he would fuck me, he would say that he would never leave me, while he was never there when I needed him.
Several times, I thought it would be better to give up and disappear forever. I tried to destroy everything that contained any trace of him, but as fast as the fire melted my eyes, I was looking for him. He always knew that I would never stop, no matter where I was, and I never denied that the world was too small, even though it was infinite.
He is who I am today, the same addictions and the same pain locked inside me. And I will not let him go. Because I love him. The same way I die, I love him. The same way he can’t breathe without me, I love him. And I would never kill him because that would mean feeling more pain inside me than he could ever imagine.
He knows, and he’s the one who whispers it in my mind, just like he’s doing now.
And that’s the only reason I’m alive.
