It happens so suddenly. Staring into your eyes, I feel it welling up from some dormant place of my heart and in one fell swoop, it comes crashing down. The wave of guilt and sadness and utter defeat. It overwhelms me, I’m left with a sinking feeling in my stomach, one that only seems to grow. All the while I still stare wordlessly into your eyes. It pains me so much, unable to will my lips to part and the words to come. I’m almost at my breaking point, my skin is crawling and it feels like there’s something inside me, under me. It wants out.
The silence is growing, I can sense your uneasiness, the sense of dread building inside you at my hesitation. Your eyes search mine, looking for something, a piece of myself to latch on to. Some part of a memory, anything. The movements are small, but they are akin to the mountains themselves taking their leave and your eyes continue to dart about mine. They’re probing, looking deeper than they should, it feels invasive. Since when have your eyes felt invasive?
The silence settles now, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and so you ask your question again, but my ears don’t hear your voice, they don’t hear anything at all. The silence becomes my own and I hoard it for what precious few moments I can, knowing it to be the only way to keep my peace. It’s only then, when I see the shimmer in your eyes, the beginnings of tears, droplets of your soul leaking out, that I feel the true guilt, the true sadness, the emotional turmoil that seeks to make shreds of my heart. The truth in those eyes is not one I can bear, so I concede. I give up. I manage to utter, under the duress of my own mind, the words that make it alright, if only for a while.
The silence evaporates, my silence. It flees from me and the relief is evident immediately. Almost as if they had never existed in the first place, your half cried tears are gone but inside I am tearing down the walls of my mind, ripping apart the entirety of what makes me, screaming through forced smiles and a brave face. It’s killing me, true as anything. It is from this ultimately that I shall die. A death of self, to a person you want me to be, a person you need me to be.