falling out of love

i remember sitting at my dim-lit desk and waiting for his text (spoiler: it would never come). i remember the fear of pissing him off, and the self-loathing that would follow suit, and then the guilt, the shame, the acute anxiety... but there was that tiny whisper which told me that we wouldn't talk anymore, so i don't know why i waited for him. i told myself, no, he will come back, it's what he always does. he'll come back. all those worries you have? all irrational. all in your head. he'll come back. just hang on. i told myself, he's the most wonderful thing in this entire fucking universe! don't you forget him. you must savour those memories. you must keep him alive in your mind. it must go on. i told myself that there was sweetness in that mourning, that i needed him like i need oxygen. i told myself that it was ok to hurt for someone so brilliant, someone who shakes up your world from its very roots. but. i only realised too late that i was killing all the best parts of me to give life to a corpse.

oh boy, you have no fucking idea how many tears i shed over you. i waited and waited and waited and waited and drove myself crazy. i cut off all my friends just to return to this hell i called "love". i didn't care about what i did, as long it amounted to you coming back. i guess attention was something i really needed back then. i would have done anything to feel your eyes on me. anything to get that smile.

my love for you was like:

if my love for you is an intruder, it shall intrude upon you forever.
it will lay its muzzle in its paws and sleep beside the closed doors of your cottage, soaking in the night chill to watch over you. it will leap at the scraps you throw away. it will be your shadow, its wagging tail will keep following you to the world's deepest, darkest regions.

but the only thing it has in common with you is blindness: your blindness to my love, my blindness to your indifference.

and it was so stupid! the person who i am now will never understand the rationale behind what i did back then. i'll never get why i lowered myself to such a level in front of you. i'll never be able to explain all those tear-stained-pillow nights, all those days i felt unloveable because you didn't glance at me. i just feel pity for the creature i was then, i wish i wasn't so insecure in my identity that i used you as a source of validation. i sincerely apologise for that.

i remember how i used to be paralysed all the time. how i would see cheese and remember you, how i would see silver and remember you, how i would look at a bird and remember you. i hurt so much until i lost sight of what i was hurting for. 2019 was the longest year in my life. and i have so many regrets about it.

i could have befriended so many people. i could have gone to so many bright places and done so many cool things! but oh, i just had to blow all my friendships to sit in hell with you. or without you, in this case. it was just so terrible, you know? i waited for you, but you never came. and i shouldn't have waited, i know now, but back then, i didn't. i thought i would have to wait forever. and i would have done that, you know? i would have written about you till i grew old and weary, with screaming joints and streaming eyes and a clinging loneliness. i thought you would be an eternally open wound, and i didn't even mind because i thought that to love was to ache, to bleed, to hurt. maybe all those bards who sang about love ached too, maybe all those nightingales who pierced their hearts on white rosebuds for love bled just as much, maybe all those sacrifices made for love are meant to hurt.

it got worse. there was blood, frequent trips to the doctor, bottles of antiseptic liquid, screaming about the pain, surgeries, and god knows what else in 2019. it's hard to even properly talk about. but you're the most stubborn pain i've ever suffered. i hope i never suffer a form of pain as great as you.

but... even though all that happened, good things came too. at the end of 2019, i met someone so bright, she reignited a fire i'd let wither away. i rebuilt bridges with a girl who i now call my best friend. i stopped fighting with my mum. i made new friends. i no longer felt like a ghost. all of that happened so slowly, it was torturous. sometimes i would relapse, cry and fall back. i thought that it was unravelling all over again. i still met people, lost people... the cycle went on. but i don't know when light seeped into my soul. everything just... slowly came together.

there's this quote by Thomas Hardy that i really love: "as contradictory as it seems, there is nothing truer than that people who have always gone right don't know half as much about the nature and ways of going right as do those who have gone wrong". and i get it. i know what it's like to lose yourself. to wake up one day and realise that all you are is a void. i know the desolation, the utter terror of feeling untethered to anything. that fright and alarm when that sturdy ground you've always known, disappears. but it's been two years, and i think i'm coming back together again. bear in mind, there are still cracks that remind me of what happened. there are words i can't say, things i can't do, requests i can't make. but still, i'm in a better place.

the sadness still clings like a shadow, but it is fainter now. the clouds have opened. the sunlight touches my skin, like an antidote to the self-loathing that plagued me. all my ghosts still haunt me sometimes, but time has softened the edges of their claws. if anything, breaking out of something that i thought was impossible to break out of has given me the confidence to break out of anything that confines me. my wings are weak and weary, but my spirit is unbroken. it was only a heartbreak, after all. but it's taught me that all the loudest, most dastardly demons look pale and tepid under the sunlight. but you gotta wait until the sun rises. you need to tolerate your own presence for long enough until you get used to it. don't ditch your own self. think of all those times you chose him over you. you have to be your own best friend, you know? you have to know yourself again.

you need to cast your nets out in the sea, picking up the pieces of yourself you threw to him as bait. scoop out the oyster shells if you need to. scour the sea and pick up all your forgotten jewels. but also create new ones. you were someone before you met him, sure, and you need to acknowledge that, but you must move out of that dirty plastic cup at the bottom of the sea if you want to live in a brighter shell. your canvas is now splattered with heartbreak, sure, but if you spend weeks squinting over the lines that existed before the heartbreak, when will you paint new skies? take a deep breath. pour some lubricant between that you of the past and the you of the future. it's okay. it gets better, i promise.

i don't know if you believe me. it's ok if you don't. everyone has different circumstances. but i know this to be true: you must let him go. allow yourself to move on, to forget, to pace the mountains overhead and hide your face among a crowd of stars that he may never see. allow yourself to think of a world that doesn't revolve around him. let yourself truly live. create a bucket list if you want to. reach out to those you broke ties with, and to the ones you never spared a second glance.

pull your head out of him, and tune in to the world again. it's been a long time since you properly said hello to the world. trust me, i've been there. look at the world again. you have to look, really notice, the little golden sections at the sides of an insect whose name you never bothered to learn. look at the woman who waters the rich lady's garden, look how her child runs amok with a tyre and a stick. look at all those vines that have climbed over the forgotten house. look, look, look. pull your eyes out of your heartbreak stained canvas and look outside the window, for a change. allow yourself a change of expression, indulge in a smile. savour the feeling of a summer come and gone, because there's beauty in that. let the atoms in your body quiver to the shrill scream of a seagull. let your heart melt to a film if you like. look for the pockets of beauty in the crevices of the world.

taste every colour on your tongue and smell every song you come across. feel the power of the world bubbling at your fingertips. then that smile, once a strange garment, will be moulded to your face, fitting, over time, better than your favourite sweater. and you will realise, after you've moved on from him (because this piece is still about that elusive "him", remember?) how scared you were of moving forward, but how, at last, you are—wondrously free.

Photo by Gilbert Cayamo from Pexels