Requiem for a dream
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I got to the airport and felt completely disoriented, despite having been there a dozen times before. I located the kiosk to print out my bag tag, and went through the motions. I fucked it up. How pathetic is it that a supposedly well-adjusted adult - or a good pretender at that - can't even peel off the instruction part properly when the entire 2-step process is written right there? I made a mess and the airline agent, seeing through my smile to catch the thinly veiled mix of shame and dismay, had to insert a plastic band underneath the handle to stabilize it and uncrumple the eldritch paper horror. She had to ensure things could function and be processed, something I am simply incapable of doing. I'm just not great at basic life skills. I never had to learn how to deal with bag tags before.
You always did it for me.
It's one of the many things over the span of a few surreal hours that I realized were not my forte. Things I never thought about before, because you simply took care of them. And after 6 odd years, I didn't even register that anymore, I took you and all my life's parts that revolved around you, big and small, for granted, as if, in those situations, you had been an extension of my own self. It was within the realm of rationality. You were always here, what was there to pause and reflect on? Yet I had to stumble my way through it alone for once. It wasn't pretty. I made do.
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When you looked into my eyes as I was casually sipping on my espresso martini, your words didn't hit me head on, at first merely trudging through the inebriation. Your facial expressions is what triggered my fight or flight response. Mere hours before my departure, mere days after moving into a new apartment together, here you were, admitting to me we no longer would be, together. It struck me like a hammer. Funny how blunt force emotional trauma can knock the wind out of your sails at a lag. It took a few hours, before my legs went numb and my arms got flabby, but sure enough, the life gradually got sucked out of them. I know reality would tell you that my reflection still looked chubby in the storefront windows as I was dragging my overweight luggage along the sidewalk on my way to the airport the next morning, but I felt all shriveled up inside.
I didn't see it coming. I didn't understand. You have a knack for surprising me with bad news.
That last hour before closing the door on our new apartment - with boxes, books, and clutter marring the extra space that was initially intended to be our saving grace - was excruciating. Life set in too abruptly, too uncontrollably, too unfairly. You had always been next to me here, in this chapter of my life, save for a couple of forgettable months that I can barely recall. I had always been here because of you. Unfortunately I haven't always been here for you. The preposition, much like the proposition, was misguided.
And then came the slow cycle through the stages of grief. In swift succession, the brain going through everything as swiftly and rapidly as possible without skipping a beat, to the point that some theoretically discrete steps melded together into an emotionally confusing mumble-jumble, alternating anger and denial, bargaining and acceptance like a world-class juggler. One fringe hypothesis states that the reason why people see their whole life flash before their eyes the moment they die has to do with a last-ditch effort to rummage through the past in order to find a way to, somehow, prevent the inevitable. It felt that way a little bit, despite the rational irony of knowing that was not going to happen.
This isn't the first time we're on the brink of sinking into oblivion. Records of the past seven years attest to that. Somehow, we always found a way to swim back up and end up catching some air. But the schemata remain etched in stone. We invariably stumble back to square one, repeating the same patterns, growing stronger momentarily before drifting apart at a snail's pace. Temporary bliss pernicious enough to hide a slow descent into irritation and incomprehension. The lines of communication increasingly get hacked by static and we inch apart in bed, waiting for a hypnic jerk to bring us closer the moment you're about to fall off. This was never sustainable in the long run.
I think I am bad at loving people.
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When the elevator door opened, my heart felt unfulfilled, yet I was resolved to admit defeat. We can't keep hurting each other if we love each other, I thought. It shouldn't work that way. This year has been a year of pain and you deserve to be freed of that. For the first time, I thought my fight response gave in to my flight impulse. I stood in that metallic box, suspended in time and space, waiting for the fall. But my ears failed to pick up on any sound. I instinctively stepped out. I wanted to see if there was still something there, some sliver of us to protect. And I saw you on the threshold. That's when I understood that it was different. That is when I realized that this was the cruelest, most heart-wrenching moment to date. Because when I looked into your eyes and held you in my arms, the faint words that got nudged between our embrace were truth incarnate. And I felt regret. I just wish they could have come out before it was maybe too late.
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I don't know what is in store now. I love you, but much like you I am tired. Tired of feeling like I can't give you what you need. Tired of contending with the wall we keep building up between us. Tired of thinking I am not what you need me to be. I don't want you to leave, but I can't ask you to stay. My hubris and self-centeredness have hurt us enough already, it's time for you to be given the freedom to make your own decision. Oh, karmic irony.
For us to work, there would be so much work to do, on both ends. So many words to say, so many things to tinker with, so much to try for. We'd both have to accept to give up on our Stockholm syndromes, the inner comfort of our egos, the instant gratification of our co-dependence.
For us to go our separate ways, one of us simply has to accept to give up on everything else.
I don't know where you stand. There is an odd sense of serenity to be derived from emotional limbo, the calm simultaneously both after and before the storm, when you don't have to fight, you can't flee, you just feel. I am emotionally dissociating so that I can find glimmers of peace in this three-day long panic attack. It's like a cozy slice of life nestled within a waking nightmare.
The terror isn't going away.
I keep turning around after the most meaningless, trifling and mundane thing happens, a Pavlovian urge to share every single snippet of life with you, no matter how inconsequential. Maybe the smaller, the more valuable, because you and only you deserve to be let in on those trivial secrets. I keep mentioning your name in the same breath as mine, as if "I" had been iron-branded with "we" all over its proverbial body. There is not a single page of my life over the past 7 years that you have not inked or been inked onto. I keep frantically and manically trying to adjust the lack of a necklace around my neck. I simply lost the key to my happiness when I stopped understanding how to love you the way you needed me to.
Much like up until three days ago, you still permeate every waking second of my life. I can feel your presence even though you are not around anymore. It's as excruciating as it is comforting.
Right now, you feel like a phantom limb.
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As I walked up to the counter gating the deserted TSA lanes, the impassible lady sitting behind the desk unexpectedly glitched in the middle of her rotely memorized routine
"ID and licence please... sorry, ID and boarding pass. It has already been a long day."
"Tell me about it."
