Words Were Never Enough

I fell in love with you at four in the morning. It was about five months into our relationship, that night when I first let you see through the mask, the one that looks like a smile. Like stupid puns and a ready laugh, like crow’s feet at the corner of my eyes. Like solid strength, enough to hold you when you cry no matter how much I wish I was the one being held.

It was WALL-E that finally did it. Stupid, I know, but far too often it is animated movies that end up as my last straws. There is some strange alchemy to them, and I am long past being surprised by the flood of emotions a colorful robot’s dumb stubbornness could bring out from the emptiness within me.

It was four in the morning, five months into our relationship when I first let you see me cry. And as I cried, you held me. At that moment it seemed like the first time anyone ever did.

Words poured out from me, the first truly honest words I have said to you. To anyone, in truth, in longer than I could remember. I spoke of depression, of the family I despised, of hospitals and their gowns that you can never fully wash off the skin. I spoke of sadness, and despair, and anger with no target and every target.

And as I cried and you held me at four in the morning, you spoke back.

And it was the right words.

Some were words I wanted to hear, some those I needed, but each one seemed as though it was made bespoke for me. As though this was the first time since the dawn of humanity they have ever been said, at least in that voice, that phrase and intent. As though for the first time someone saw me, saw what hid behind the smile and crow’s feet and ready laugh and stupid puns.

We loved each other. And in the three years we held on after that night, we have said many more of those tailored words. But I was too broken, and you were too broken, and words were never enough. Our love was never enough.

We were mismatched, jagged puzzle pieces, helpless but to stab each other with our sharp edges. And in trying to make ourselves fit we bent ourselves until we broke. Until we made of ourselves something that could not survive without the other.

Living in parallel suffering, we were each trapped in our own vicious cycle. So different in our needs, our capabilities, the kind of strength we could spare and the way we showed our love, yet so familiar we could barely look at each other. Look and be reminded of ourselves.

Three times I tried to leave, to end this whirlpool we have made of our lives. Three times you begged me to stay, promised things would change, promised you will be better, and as you did I found myself promising the same. We discussed plans and wrote in journals and talked to therapists. We built a rope of words, binding ourselves as we thought to carry the other.

But words were never enough.

We could not carry each other when we could not carry ourselves. And as the flow of our words became a trickle, resentment filled the silence between us. Love stagnated became a hateful dependency, a year long fight we called a relationship as we stabbed and broke and could not imagine life without the other.

Until finally, we did.

It has been a year since we broke up. A good year, for you and I, better than any year has been for us. We tried to stay friends, but the baggage between us was too stubborn. And so, as friends we’ve slept together seven times - more than the last half year of our romance.

In lack of commitment, in the casual, we have refound our passion, the one lost for so long. It was in your voice every time the tension built, as you said you hate how good we are together, and in mine as I agreed; and it was there every time we were spent, when you said we can never get back together. And every time, it was in mine as I agreed.

Passion was there every time, its sound that of memories frantically drawn as we struggled to remember the reasons we ever broke up. Until one night, at four in the morning, I cried.

And as I cried, you held me. 

The words that poured out from me were different. I spoke of loneliness, of a vast and ever growing distance from the people around me, of forgetting what it is like to care. I spoke of sadness, and despair, but not of anger - the fire that has kept me going for so long has gone dim and faint, no longer enough to protect me from the night. 

In truth, I spoke of a life without you, and although I have never said your name you understood.

And as I cried and you held me at four in the morning, you spoke back. 

And in a sudden, discordant shock, I realized it was no longer the right words. 

Their sound was no longer meant for me, their target the new, hard anger I saw in your eyes. Anger that did not leave room for my sorrow, my self pity, my pain. And as I looked back on those three years, I realized I could not remember the last time your words did not have that discordant ring.

I bent my sharp edges so cruelly in the attempt to fit you own. I made of your every word gospel, even as slowly, day by day by day we drifted farther apart. I realized it has been a long time since you last spoke those words meant just for me, a long time since I did not need to make of myself a stranger to have been yours.

And now, the good year has ended in plague. You’ve fallen back into your cycle, and I into mine. 

I’m sorry.

I can’t save you.

And you can’t save me.

Words were never enough.