I’ve forgotten how to start these
Phew…
Here goes nothing
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It has been a challenging three years, on the macro level as much as on the micro level. A time during which fleeting happiness and temporary bliss have too often had to share a house with underlying despair, unrelenting pain and unspeakable guilt. Papy is gone. Half my dreams were buried shortly after he was. But in all of that, you have always been my constant. A defective beacon whose light shines haphazardly, dangerously, radiating the place over like a feral beast. Yet, thanks or despite all the hurdles, it always allowed me to bask in the embrace of safety.
Things have not been perfect. After all, they say that even a broken clock is right twice a day.
But what about two broken clocks?
We’ve made do. We pushed through. Against all odds we made it past every conceivable ordeal life was ready to throw at us. Like puppets we danced, patiently, hoping that the strings would bring us closer together, time and again. We were right. Until we weren’t.
Until I no longer was.
Or until I was no longer right for you.
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I can’t wrap my mind around the concept of a dying love. I have seen the kind that ends up in fireworks, multiple successive arsons that ripple through the heart and bleed it dry. I am all too familiar with the implosion that wipes out everything and reshapes the landscape in ways you couldn’t fathom. But never had I experienced the cold embrace of a slow death, when love fades, gradually, like a dying houseplant whithering away. It’s silent, it does not make a sound, it does not cry out for help. It just goes into the night. I guess it is akin to what scientists refer to as heat death - stars slowly dying around you, one after the other, until you are inevitably, eventually
Left alone in this cold, deserted universe of yours.
Is that what happened to us? Is that what is happening to us?
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Since you uttered those words I can’t find myself anymore. If it’s not my fault, if you still love me, then why? I know I am shortsighted, and probably still see the world through a kid’s heart, but how can we turn into broken memories if we are still holding hands? How can our future vanish if we’re here?
How can I lose you when you still smile like this?
I know I’m not exactly perfect. I am plagued with the survivalist selfishness and artificial self-centeredness that result from an overdose of introspection; I am not impervious to occasional bouts of cockiness, stubborness, and other hubris-related diseases. Too rarely do I lend a listening ear or offer a helping hand, because I am clumsy, awkward, unfit and I’m scared of pretty much everything in this world.
Everything but you.
We created a bubble that let me be happy. Nevermind the bursts of anger, the violence of words that pierce like daggers when we cry for help but things get lost in translation, or the misery of daymares. I am happy. I was happy. Because at the end of the day, I got to hold you, look in your eyes and see honest, genuine love. 10 years running after something so elusive, so precious that I had started to gaslight myself into believing it was a myth. But it’s not. Because you’re here.
But I guess the bubble is not making you happy.
I know I am far from perfect. I took you for granted because deep down that is probably what I wanted, to believe I no longer had to fight for something. I failed to pay enough attention to your needs because I was too focused on my fleemsy desires. I looked inward when I should have peeked outward, swallowed the bitter pill and accepted that I couldn’t do it alone. It takes two to tango, but I guess I never could accept that you would know the steps, that you could take the lead and we could face the music
Together.
That’s what that happens when the hero complex metastasizes. It refuses to die and starts spreading to every facet of the relationship, turning us into me, turning me into a hypothetical savior.
And a real-life asshole.
There is nothing perfect about me. But I tried.
Simply not hard enough.
Yet you’re still here. And my heart can’t compute. How can you be here and gone at the same time? How can there be a countdown to the moment you are no longer by my side? How can the outcome of love be uncertain if it’s still here with us?
I wish I could carve the sound of your voice saying I love you on my eardrums before it fades away. I wish I could store the sight of your smile behind my pupils to replay it forever, for it is the most beautiful thing that I have ever been given the chance to lay my eyes upon. I wish I could etch the exact hues of your hazel eyes onto my brain, let them plant never-ending butterflies in my stomach forever. I wish I could brand the feeling of holding you hand onto my heart the way you tattooed those dotted lines on my arm, for it is about as close as I have ever been to experiencing true happiness. I think it is true happiness.
The second tattoo you gave me sits on my wrist, hovering above my pulse. I don’t know what that means. But it’s here. And I can’t erase it. It will forever remain unfinished, it will always feel like something is missing, that something about it is not quite right. But it’s always going to be right there, reacting to the drumbeat of my heart. There will forever be room on there for you, just like there will always be room in here. Because it’s you. You.
I just wish our love was enough to make you stay.
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