Rumination

The sky is a pale grey as though it mourns for the passing of the sun. At this time of year, the two are estranged. When they meet there is a discordant chill of animosity. Occasionally, the sun will make a show of it, flirting with the clouds, or shining brightly as it slips away to pastures new. Going to a place it prefers to be. The abandoned sky collapses in on itself and deprives us of the sparkle of its children. Seldom do the stars come out to play when the sky is so saddened.

I walk a well-trod path, observing the greys that bleed from above and into the landscape. Even the beiges of the mud are lacklustre. I wish for a frost. Sugar sprinkled across the land to help the medicine go down.

The time of year doesn’t matter anymore. The world has been bleached of its joy. This is how it is now. Only this time I walk a path of old. An archaeologist digging up my past. Her past. Was it ever our past?

Sitting heavily on the large, cold stone, the air is expelled from me. I want to cry, but that release will not be afforded me. There is no release. I am held in a pain that I never saw coming. The betrayal will bewilder me for evermore. I cannot make sense of it. But still I try.

We kissed on this rough-hewn stone. We kissed as though our lives depended upon it. Breathing ourselves into the other. Occasionally coming up for air. Divers searching for treasure. I thought we’d both found it. I was robbed of mine. She does not value that which I gave her freely, nor that which she took from me in a game I had no idea we were a playing. In a game only she knew the rules to.

I held her as we sat on the cold, unfeeling stone and I could hear her heartbeat next to mine. We came together in this place and I felt a connection. This chance meeting was meant. We had found each other at last.

This is where we began sharing our dreams, we talked of our hopes, needs and wants. Each utterance was a prayer for a future together. So quickly we were one. One mind, one heart and one vision. We wanted the same and so we became the same. I relaxed into the fantasy of her and thought it my reality.

I sit here and wonder at how you can lose something that you never really had. She was a ghost. There was no substance here. There never was. But I will be forever haunted by her. By what could have been. I met with nothing and I gave everything. Now here I am, my mind going around and around in ever decreasing circles. However small the circles become, I know they can never end. I am broken and my torture is this dizzying spiral of why?

I cannot stop my brain from chasing its tail. From chasing this tale. From chasing her. I loved her with everything I had and more. I never once thought that I would lose her. The certainty of my love was my undoing. I was a fool, and she saw me coming. I gave her what she wanted until my cupboards were bare. I lived for her and thought that the feeling was mutual. It wasn’t. She didn’t care. She never cared. She was not capable of such things. All she was, was a mirror and a mimic. Nothing more.

There is a part of me that cannot accept that. No one could be so cruel. To be a cuckoo in the nest, push everyone else out of the safety of its home and leave me to feed her with my heart and soul until I was empty. That is a hell on Earth, and I know I did not deserve that. And neither did she. We both deserved better.

I tried to help her. I knew she did not want to hurt me. I knew we could make it work. And there I was, feeding the ever hungry mouth. Doing more. Giving more. All she did was sit expectantly and feed upon me.

That wasn’t her. That couldn’t be her. I loved her and I know she loved me. There were times that we shared where nothing else mattered but the moment. We were encased in the moment and had it all. We were happy. That counted for something. It should still count for something.

She is out there in the world, when she should be here. On this rock. With me. We belong together. That is all there is to it. 

But why does she hurt me so? 

I desire her with every fibre of my being, but now, when we’re together, it hurts. I feel my body vibrate jarringly as though I am hitting a fatal resonant frequency and I am dangerously close to shaking apart completely. My gut tightens and sends messages of pain to me. I am alert to the danger she presents even before she opens her mouth and assails me with blame. I am to blame for her pain. Pain she brought secretly to our union. Pain that now prevents us connecting in any meaningful way. Pain that blinds her to my love and deafens her to my protestations. All I want is for her to listen to me. I can help. I’ll do anything to help. It doesn’t have to be this way. It never needed to be this way. They hurt you. She hurt you. He hurt you. They never listened. They never cared. I do.

I do.

We both said I do, and we promised ourselves to each other. To be together through thick and thin. She made a vow. So why won’t she honour it? Honour me? Respect me?

I hear her voice, but they are not her words. They cannot be her words. She isn’t speaking to me. She can’t be speaking to me, because what she is saying bears no relation to who I am. She knows me better than that. These are lies. Barbed lies intended for only one purpose. To wound. Why is she hurting me when all I have ever done is love her?

I never hurt her. They did. She is not healing. She seems intent on never healing. That in itself hurts me. She hurts me and she knows what she does.

By rights I should leave. I should not be in this place now. I should not be thinking about her. Not anymore. Not after everything that has happened. No good can come from my being with her. Even like this. Communing with her ghost. Wishing for what once was. Desiring her over everything else in this world. Even myself and my health. In dire warning, my gut pulses its dread signal and my body echoes that warning by going into shock and making me dance involuntarily. We all see what we want to see, not what is there. Reality is a construct that only works when we share it honestly with those we love.

She lied and she betrayed me. I have lost everything. Worse still, there are chains that bind and I cannot release myself from them. I know I am lying now. It is within my power to walk away. Those chains are not real. She was never real. I am a part of her dark fantasy and I do not want to face reality. I am telling myself that reality hurts. I am pulling away from a world she taught me to despise. I share her pain now. That is the one thing she has given me. The weight of it drags me down and down. Ever down.

I take my phone from my pocket and doom scroll. There is no message from her. Of course there isn’t. There are social media posts though. Artifice designed to cut me. And it does. I have very nearly escaped her so many times now. Turned my back on her and moved away. Then here I am again. I can’t get her out of my head. She is ever present. 

I miss her.

I text her.

She will make me wait for a response and she will make me wait before we see each other again. But when we do, she will again be a promise. A false promise that can only hurt me more in the further betrayal that it will inevitably bestow upon me. But what can I do? I am addicted to her and I don’t deserve anything other than her. 

Besides, she’s addicted to me too. Addicted to hurting me. We’re a match of sorts. Just as long as I keep giving her what she wants. I sweeten the deal by clinging onto a futile belief; that one day we will turn things around. One day, everything will work out and we will be happy. One day, she will see me for who I really am, and she will love me.

I live for that day.

And I will go around and around in the vain pursuit of that day until I die. I deny to myself that I have already passed the point of death. There are so many way that you can kill someone and she has surely killed me. I am emptied of all that I was and all I was meant to be. All I am is pain. I hope she does not find out. I couldn’t bear it if she discarded me.

Time to put on a brave face and smile in the face of all the hurt. We’ll be fine. We just need to keep trying. We just need to want it enough.

Walking from that place, the world is just a little greyer. My eyes only see its grey now and even that is too much. The world is a cruel place. It isn’t for the likes of me. Only she can save me now. I hold my phone in my hand awaiting the tremor of its body to signal a message from her, and I try not to think about what my life will be if that response never comes. I try not to think of her sitting with another. Falling into his arms. Someone full of everything she envies and wants. Someone who will give willingly with no idea that she is taking from them and will not stop taking. I am hers. She must know that. I wonder if there is anyone else nonetheless. She is hungry after all. So, so hungry.

My phone vibrates. It is her. And so it begins yet again. The slow and inexorable dance of death. My death.

Until death us do part.