Meadows With Sorrows

Trigger Warning: Mental Health

“Right now, I just won’t be able to…” My thoughts sit in the back of my throat as my heart cramps painfully in my chest.

            “You can’t what, Emme?” Connor’s voice was never agitated or harsh even in the most intense of moments.  His deep brown eyes always burned with eagerness and adventure, darting around new places as if he found a new home. The softness of them never waned and only intensified with a glint of determination when he met someone who turned in on themselves as if they had a shell. As if it were a challenge for him of sorts to strip their armor and have them run through the world blind to all its problems with him. 

            Even now, his eyes didn’t bore into my soul with an ounce of rage or even a hint of disappointment. The soft brown seemed to dull now even amid a colorful meadow filled with flowers with the sun shining onto our skin and illuminating his blonde hair. That dullness didn’t haze over the tear that begged to leave his right eye, nor did it blind me to the redness crawling up his face and light quivering of his voice.

            I angle my head down towards the ground and the details of the purple lupine flowers resting at our feet blurs as I viciously attempt to blink back my own sorrows that threaten to leave my own eyes. The first day he brought me here, Connor watched me complete my homework with unkempt happiness as he gazed up to me and back down to his drawing pad with his hands making quick motions. The result was me, my curly hair thrown messily atop my head and the sun illuminating my ebony skin and clothes just enough to give me a golden clow and enhance the swirly pattern on the blouse he gifted me.

            “Creativity and Imagination.” He beamed, turning his phone towards me with the same flowers that were in the field showing on the screen. “The meaning of them includes happiness, too. “

            “That’s nice. They’re beautiful.” I asked but curiosity stirred as the corner of his lips curved into a light smile and his hair blew just as it did. As if the Earth showed its appreciation with its joy by gracing us with a slight breeze. “Why are you so happy?”

            “I’m not just happy. I’m having an epiphany. I’ve been coming here all my life and the flowers never seemed as beautiful then as they do now. With you sitting amongst them.”

            I should have ended his infatuation then. I should have wisped away as lightly as the wind that came with his smile and allowed that stupid infatuation to snuff out and die. Instead, I let it burn along with mine.

That was my biggest mistake.

            I bring my eyes up to his and strengthen my jaw, wishing it not to quiver. “We’re different Connie. It wasn’t meant to happen.”

            “What’s not meant to happen, Emme?” His smooth voice cracks at my name and he finally allows the tears to spill over. It’s no surprise that the sky decides to cry with him. He had to be an angel. “Everything was okay. It was perfect. Please just tell me what happened.”

            The pleas had grown desperate, and he ignored the raindrops that grew heavier on our skin and the rapidly reproaching sunlight. His typical energy had left and in its place was left a version of him I never wanted to cause.

One filled with despair.

            “We have different paths, Connor. What you want to do around the world… inspiring people and changing them,” I pause taking a shaky breath. “I can’t do all the with you.”

            “Emme the world is our oyster. We can do anything, and we can figure it out together.”

            “There’s so much you want to be. An artist, an actor, sees the world. My world doesn’t leave this town.”

            “I know how you look at me.” He reaches a hand out to me and his eyes only serve as a window to his breaking heart as they reflect more and more pain when I flinch away. “You told me before that you saw a future with me, Emme. We talked about it.”

            “In a meadow that’s covered in flowers Connor. With flowers that you told me meant Imagination. I wanted so badly to hook onto that and imagine a future with you. But that won’t happen.”

            “It won’t or can’t?”

            “Both!” My shout feels so sudden, and the guilt only makes me grow nauseous. “We are living in a fairytale. We spent so much time in this field pretending everything was okay, but it’s not. When we leave this meadow, the world is still out there and for some reason everything is against us.”

            “The world?” His laugh that follows lacks humor and he tosses his hand up and my eyes catch on the matching bracelets we bought months ago. “The world has nothing to do with this right now. You are making the choice to leave me. To leave us.”

            His words only twist the knife that I embedded in my own chest. I want to live in that carefree world with him, but I can’t. When we’re in this meadow, my heart beats erratically, as if it were making up or lost time. I am a zombie outside this haven he gave me. My eyes dry from all the tears that came before with no more left to cry. I go to sleep at night hoping that I will gain an emptiness in my chest instead of a sense of loneliness and misery so strong that it consumes my every waking moment beyond these flowers. 

            For Connor, these flowers were the embodiment of creativity, imagination, and happiness. I was entertained by his fascination and his rambles of botanical meanings, but it was never those I believed in. He was my sense of happiness and wonderland. An escape of sorts from all the troubles that haunted me that I was aware and unaware of. Still, wonderland is a fantasy and therefore, so is my happiness. 

            Everything I feel for him is real, which is why it must end. He is meant to see the world and serve the life cause that he is searching for. He’s not meant to be my crutch in a world I eventually stopped fighting against. A world that chose to batter me and leave me in the darkest corner with a small source of light in the form of a lean tall boy, with kind eyes, and blonde hair as carefree as he was. His light had to explore all parts of the world, not just stay in my corner.

            I was selfish when I met him and when I allowed a bond to form, but I would no longer give attention to that part of myself. The world had already chosen to be as its sacrificial lamb, leaving me with a life of loneliness and everlasting melancholy that only showed up in different hues of the same color. I wouldn’t allow it to drag Connor into that same demise with me and rid him and everybody else he will and has met with the chance to see the light he was that was so much brighter than the one that always shined on this meadow.

            “You’re full of life and joy. This world is your oyster, not mine. Lugging around an empty shell won’t gain you anything you deserve, and I won’t let you spend any more parts of your life trying to bring me happiness again and again.”

            “I have a choice in this.” His pleas were getting weaker, more tired. 

            “I do too, and it is you.” I allow him to see the tears streak down my face. My mind is made even if it hurts. “Its over and it’s for the best.”

            I imagined acceptance looking like peace. I expected for the shoulders to get lighter when the weight of sadness and confusion finally left someone’s body and for their eyes to regain a determined spark. Instead, acceptance looked different for Connor. His body straightened and he clenched his jaw as tears still ran down his face, almost disguised by the forgotten rain. His hands tightened into fists at his sides and the love, and sadness never left his eyes, but grief and lost filled them, too.

            Acceptance wasn’t instantaneous happiness and serendipity. It could be reluctant and brutal, but still acceptance all the same. The instant I saw that look on his face I knew.

            He wasn’t going to fight anymore. He knew my choice was solid.

            “I love you, Emme and I know I always will. I wish you’d understand that I am… was always willing to wait until you loved yourself before you could fully love me. Even now,” he picks at the clasp on his wrist and doesn’t break eye contact with me, “I will always imagine and hope for a world where that happens.”

            It feels like all the time in the world passes as I watch him turn his back to me – white shirt now completely soaked in water – and walk away with tense shoulders. He didn’t want to accept it, but he did because he loved me. He’d know this was the right choice.

            Still, I wonder what would happen if I yelled his name now. If I decided that just maybe, things would get better for me. Even as I ponder and grieve all possible lost possibilities, my body stays frozen and I stray my eyes away from his back towards the ground where the glint of his half of matching bracelet he had with me gleams tauntingly.

            The rain crashes down harder as he gets smaller and I finally recognize that my body is shaking, my heart is bleeding and I feel a new feeling take place in my chest that I want to crush and keep all at once.

Heartbreak.

Crushing it would mean one less feeling to linger on and suffer from, but having it means that I had him for at least a moment in time. As sobs wrack my body upon the revelation and the raindrops splatter onto the lupine flowers heavily from the sky, I imagine that maybe just for once the world decided to give me a friend and cried with me.