It's been some time uh? I hope you are well. I genuinely do.
We need to talk.
Or rather, I need to talk.
It has been almost 6 years. That's a long-ass time, 6 years. Enough to get into you own head and dwell on the littlest things until they drive you crazy. Enough to self-sabotage at every turn, because I am not fooling anyone, I've been plotting to fuck up every single one of my relationships to keep the spot open for you in case you'd come back. You won't come back, but it did not feel like any of them was worth it anyway.
Nostalgia goggles will do that to you.
Nobody could ever live up to your legacy, to who you were. Everybody always came up way too short. You left me stranded on an island of my own making, and it is true that as time went by the sea eventally simmered down.
But it did not matter.
I was still lost.
It does not feel like I went through the 6 degrees of separation. It feels like I went through dozens of them. And I would fail over and over again, trying to switch gears to no avail. Rinse and repeat this cycle of self-imposed misery.
The memory of you was an obstacle I couldn't overcome despite my best intentions. I tried, mind you, but probably not that hard though. So I crafted a reality where you were nowhere to be found and yet ubiquitous. I made you a deity in this universe, some almighty idea that governed my world and possessed my heart. I prayed to the memory of us and preached to others. I locked myself up in a cult built around the idea of you.
Not even us.
Because I barely remember what we were like together.
I have forgotten your laughs, I have forgotten your smiles, your little quirks, your voice, the way you looked at me, the way you looked at the world, your tears. After a while, I started forgetting you and you more by the day. So I glorified who you used to be and made someone up in my mind, a phantom that would stay by my side and help me plough through my crippling loneliness. It was not you. It never really was. But it did not matter, I was a vessel to corrosive regrets and noxious depression. It was retribution, it was my way to atone for my sins. The only way I could come up with.
Hurting to stop hurting.
It did not work.
And so I was stuck, I was stuck in a life where I would do anything to get away from your invisible, smothering grasp. I fell at every single turn, trying to take my heart off of you. The more painful the better. The rationale was, if I can find someone to hurt me more than you still do, it will conceal you somehow.
Peel off my skin to remove the scars.
That's how I accepted to be treated like shit, that's how I was okay with someone physically and emotionally battering me. Heck, I secretly reveled in the idea that it would distract me for a hot minute.
And it became a masochistic addiction.
Scour life for anything that would give me a kick, anything that would make me feel alive beyond you.
Fuck me up, fuck me up, fuck me the fuck up. I'm too far gone now anyway.
Sure, I would go cold turkey every so often, sometimes for long periods of time. But I relapsed every chance I got, because I couldn't quench my thirst for that high I got when I stooped to low.
Fuel my self-loathing, nurture my seething anger, and don't forget to crush my trust in others in the process.
I wanted to believe that my heart was broken beyond repair and embrace the shards, feel them dig into my skin and make my soul shriek. I just longed to feel something again.
It's been almost 6 years during which I lied to myself to keep my promise that I would forever wait for you.
So I tried to make do with this wreck of a heart, to free up some little corner in this factory of sadness, but it was never enough, because you take up too much damn space.
6 years of living with a ghost by my side, day in and day out, of sharing who I am with the festering corpse of our relationship.
But the time has come for me to kick you out
Because it's finally time for someone else to move in
And she needs the space you're still taking
_____________________________________________________________________________
___________________
It took me 6 years to find you. Or rather, it took you 6 years to find me. The longest game of hide and seek in my life.
It took you a mere 5 weeks to convince me that I was not a hopeless piece of shit. It took you 4 more weeks to prove it.
I was not expecting you. You just appeared one day out of the blue, without warning. I guess that's always how it is.
You kept knocking on the door, ever so gently, so patiently, and I was itching to open, I was itching to connect. But I waited. I waited for the timing to be right because I understood that for the first time, I wanted to let someone in.
Because I knew
That you would change my life.
Because you don't feed into my addictions. I don't feel that temporary bliss just to collapse the very next minute. You don't hurt like... Wait, you just don't hurt.
Shit, I am not hurting anymore.
I know it is not as simple as we both wished it were. Because my time here has an expiration date. And it is a weird thing for a relationship to have a set date when everything will change that you can actually circle on the calendar with a sharpie. It is at once depressing, disconcerting, and oddly reassuring. Because I will be gone in a few months, and it is something we have both accepted.
Or something we both pretend we did, when neither of us is actually okay with it.
So we freak out, it's inevitable. Every once in a while, everything suddenly goes south and we have to sink or swim.
But I truly believe we can swim.
Because I'm tired of sitting idly by on this tiny island in my head.
She does not need to show me colors, or sounds. She sobers my heart up and it stops retching and throwing up.
I know y'all tell me there's the age gap, you tell me about the cultural barrier, about the ticking clock,
But who gives a shit
Look at her
Look at how beautiful she is
Look at how her smile is thz antidote to all the sadness in my head. Look at how it breathes meaning into a life that has felt so full of shit and so empty of hope for far too long. Look at how it awakens something strange behind this ribcage and fleshes it out every time she looks into my soul with those hazel eyes.
Look into mine, look how wide I can open them now that she is by my side. I no longer need to squint and pretend that beauty is out there somewhere. It is right here
You are right here next to me
Listen to her laugh, listen to how my heart skips a beat when she cracks up. Listen to how it's playing music again at every teehee. Listen and shut up, just like my head for as long as she has been here. Listen to the silence of my self-diagnosed chemical imbalance, of my crippling depression and sporadic suicidal urges. Listen to her, listen to her voice and how it soothes me when I feel like falling back into the same old patterns, to how she can pull me back up with a single word and make life almost as beautiful as she is.
I am so good with her. I don't live in fear of everything that life could throw at us, I don't feel inadequate in a relationship for the very first time. It does not just feel right.
It is right.
I don't know what happiness is supposed to look like, but there is one thing I know for sure
If happiness has a face
Then it looks a whole lot like you.
You make me happy like nobody ever before, and I am failing as a translator because I don't have words to convey what you mean to me. You've flipped the script, you've changed the game. And when I go, it is gonna the hardest thing I have to do in my entire life.
But that's okay.
That's okay.
Because every second life gives me with you is a moment I will cherish forever. Every time you breathe on my chest I take a mental snapshot of the rush I get, every crumb of this slice of life we're sharing is another star in my eyes that life won't ever be able to take away from me. Every joke, every touch, every look, every text, every grimace helps me picture a future where you are holding my hand for better or for worse.
And yesterday when I was tailspinning, you sat there next to me and waxed newly-acquired knowledge about coffee, and I looked at you. And I realized that everything so far had led up to you.
It won't be easy, but as long as we are together
We'll make it through
Together
Thank you for that, and so much more you don't know.
So, farewell Emma. Once upon a time I loved you with all that my heart could bear, and I thought that I could never do that ever again, regardless of how much I grew up or at least struggled to.
But someone is proving me wrong every day now, and you can't stay here. Because I don't want you anymore.
I want her by my side.
And nobody but her.
Thank you for everything, I hope you're happy.
Because thanks to her I am.
Hi Alex,
I'm sorry, it's a little messy in here. But I believe that after some cleaning up, you will feel right at home. I really hope so.
Welcome to my life
