don’t hurt yourself (a mats hummels drabble)
when you hurt me you hurt yourself try not to hurt yourself
I was never a big fan of my birthday.
But that's an already known fact, one that you've all read about before, one that we shall now get over and move onto the topic of this little tale.
Sure, I was never a big fan of my birthday, but something I did love that came with it?
Gifts.
I mean, who doesn't love getting gifts?
(No one. No one doesn't love getting gifts.)
And I was never one to want big shiny things, nope, I mostly kept it simple: a bike, before I realised I hated exercising, a brand new laptop, when I realised I loved staying in on the Internet instead, a trip (alone) to somewhere cold and different where no one would know my face and I would know no ones...
Yet this year.
Oh well, who would've thought.
This year I wanted what my mother would probably call "a quite exquisite request".
This year, for my birthday, I wanted a divorce.
Plain and simple if we followed our pre-nup, a few signatures here and there, lawyers bickering over properties we didn't care about just to raise their fees, probably a bit of yelling on our part when it came to who kept Kaiser, Mats thinking he'd win until I played the guilt card and swooped everything off his feet.
The guilt card.
Because yeah, he was guilty.
And he knew it, of course he knew it, it was coming off of him like waves, guilty, guilty, guilty, ever since the rumours started to be spread around.
(Rumours that I never confronted him about because duh, of course they were simply rumours, why bother him about it, the poor thing?)
(I was an idiot.)
(Should've confronted him about it.)
(Not dodged the subject like a child every time he – or anyone – mentioned it, almost covering my ears and humming like that Sam Smith song.)
(When Chelsea asked if it was true I was moving to Munich soon, I hung up the Skype call on her and ignored all further attempts of contact.)
He was a traitor, traitor, traitor, constantly being reminded of that now by the comments left on every single form of social media he hád, the headlines on bold letters, the word whispered over and over again at him on the street, yelled over and over again at him on the pitch.
(Word even I wanted to hiss at him now.)
That made me feel bad for him.
Because the only place where he was supposed to feel safe, in which he'd be in a "judgement free zone" (snort) was where he'd find me.
Me, who always looked anything but "judgement free", who was already thinking of counterattacks to every single argument he could even think of speaking, of using as an excuse to why he did what he'd done.
They say "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".
More like hell hat no fury like a women betrayed.
I wanted to not feel betrayed, to not have this wrenching feeling in my gut, because any sane human would know that betraying your club and betraying your wife are two entirely different things, obviously.
Obviously.
Even though he'd been tied to one much longer than to the other, yet he'd done it still.
(But not without beating himself up for it, I hoped, because I wouldn’t be able to handle myself if he’d done it without thinking it through properly, if the decision came easily and if he just didn’t care enough.)
He betrayed it. Was selfish and broke its heart.
(To follow his dream, a tiny voice inside my head said, to win great things and lift big cups.)
(To fill his pockets even more, another tiny voice replied, the bitter one, the victorious one, to become famous for his achievements instead of his character, to be known as a dirty winner instead of a loyal loser.)
"Football is like any other business", some people said. "If you're not advancing in your career because you're stuck in a sucky company, you'd switch it for a better one if the opportunity came, wouldn't you?"
I wished I could be as cold. As detached.
But you see, I am a football fan. I see with my heart and not my eyes, and I feel it deeply inside my sould, not simply on my skin.
So it hurt, it felt personal, it felt like a betrayal to me.
As a fan, I realised.
(Not as a wife, the logical part peeped right after.)
Yet as the fan part was such a large part, I couldn't help it. I couldn't not be affected by the decision he'd just made, the documents he'd just signed, the hearts he'd just broke.
Because I always thought he was different.
(Felt like such an idiot admitting that now.)
(Seriously, like The Dumbest Human, holy fuck if I could go back in time and slap some sense into myself, I would've done it three hundred times in a row.)
I defended him, and stood by him, through the ups and downs, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health...
Oh fuck.
I heard the clich on the front door, small, careful (dreadful?) steps, Mats entering the room and making my heart stop.
Not always did that happen – I mean, if it did it probably meant I háad a strange heart condition or something -, but after a while I came to the conclusion that my heart skipped a beat in the important moments.
(First time I made him laugh. First time he kept brushing his hand against mine until he held it. First time he said he "sort of" loved me. First time he said he really loved me. When he slipped that silver ring down my finger. When I realised I loved him so much it hurt.)
(When I realised he could hurt me so much it made me question my love.)
I didn't have to say anything.
Mats knew.
"I'm staying."
(At least for now, at least until I can look at your face without wanting to slap it and scream at it or shove a yellow jersey down your throat and make you swallow it.)
(At least until I can detach myself from what you've done, detach our marriage from what you’ve done, until I can see things clearly and not a blurry mess of yellow red blue home shiny trophies loyalty silver medals frustration heartbreak ambition and us.)
"Oh, and Kaiser is staying with me."
--
HAPPY BIRTHDAY NINA fuck mats an asshole i want to bitchslap him on the face NEXT SHIT I WRITE SHALL BE AN AU IN WHICH YOU BITCHSLAP MATS IN THE FACE OKAY
(thank you for always being an amazing friend yaddayaddayadda we’ve known each other for too long now for me to come up with cool new stuff to say on your birthday SORRY YOU KNOW I SUCK WITH WORDS)
the title comes from the AMAZING queen b song of the same name (pls listen to lemonade if you haven’t already it is a MASTERPIECE), don’t forget to like if you liked etcetc
lots of love G x