The Last Hours of a Love Story

The last hours of my love story weren’t hours. No, not even days. It was a long, lengthy process. The type of process we don’t think it’s worthy to notice. 

It was boring at first. And slowly it made me ill. This gut-wrenching feeling consumed my thoughts.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I reckoned it was because the love - which once filled me - was stuck on my throat. Then, I couldn’t speak. The bittersweet words that never left my mouth kept company to my rotten love. It’s ironic because I never felt so alone. 

I became distant, sick of this four-letter word. After, I stopped looking. Looking for things, looking at things, looking forward. Only this glass-eyed, torpid expression. 

I mourned for the loss of my love. Grief is not what people make it to be, and this surprised me. I expected to be stricken by anguish and sorrow, but I felt nothing. 

It came on waves. And like the demise of my adoration, it was quiet. Everything is quiet with me. They always told me this, that I was quiet. 

But this… this was a different type of quietude. 

One could compare it to the feeling of drowning, except I was already suffocating. I suppose it was just the realization of it. 

Not much time later, my misery drove me insane. And I preferred to believe that I never actually loved, that it was a misconception of mine. That it was all in my head.

I felt embarrassed to say that I loved someone when the situation escalated this far.

I lied and I know it. It was selfish on my part. And it’s not like it was all bad. 

My marriage was still the best day of my life. Call me sappy or cheesy, but now I feel no shame admitting this. Funnily enough, I never thought I would want to get married, the divorce rates were growing and I never considered it necessary to legitimate a union.

Of course, this changed when I met Fallon. I remember laughing when I first heard that name “Fallon Rebel? Is this his actual last name?” I asked myself. But seeing him for the first time made me realize that there was no other name better for him. The ‘Rebel’ was a bit too much, but in a way or another, it suited him. 

At first, he left me uneasy. Well, not him per se, but his image. However, at the same time, I was drawn to him - like everyone else. 

He was charismatic and had a way with words. And that’s great because he was always fighting for a cause. Fallon genuinely liked to help people. And he made them smile with his well-thought sentences and quick wit. 

Fallon was also the type of person who liked to lead, he opened our ways. But at the same time, he always knew when to give up control. This was a foreign concept to me back then. 

But still, he was always the center of attention. 

And I, unlike him, worked backstage. I was silent. 

This time, it was a lethal type of silence. A vengeful type of silence. I was killing them while they killed me. It was an all-encompassing rage. I was angry at the universe, and at myself. 

That’s how I met him. He was angry too. But his anger was different. It was loud and passionate, like wildfire. 

I never thought Fallon would notice me. I guess he’s even better at reading people than I thought. We had fun, another unfamiliar notion at this time. 

I was lovesick, crazy about him. I loved his ideas and loved his mind. I remember saying that it was my dream to go inside it. 

Fallon, of course, loved me too. With all my faults and my wild aspirations. 

We liked the same things and shared the same vision and all those banalities people say when they are in love. But liking or not, he made me feel special by choosing me. By sharing his worries with me, by acting as he truly was with me. 

I fervently believe that all ambitious people carry masks, personas. And Fallon was ambitious, it wasn’t wrong of his part, of course. 

Except he was permanently searching for new plans, to which he would grow bored of quickly. 

And I wasn’t like this, like him. So it happened to me. I was one of his projects and then I was suddenly dull, uninteresting. I got even more hateful when he indeed got bored like I knew he would. 

But he lied. He said he wasn’t bored of me and my rigid ways.

Well, considering how uncommon concepts became a motif here, I will use a recurring one. I, without fail, made everything about me. It was my first major mistake. 

If he was bored it was my fault. If he was tired it was my fault again. Even with affairs that didn’t even make sense as to why I was remotely related to, as in how he had a bad day at work, it was my fault. 

I was paranoid. I was fighting against myself and I wished so bad that I could’ve been enough for him. So, I tried my best to not be pessimistic. 

When things are going bad I like to pretend I am someone in a book and that somehow I’ll have a happy ending. It was something I did as a child and it simply stuck with me to adulthood. 

I thought that - as a character - I had limited options. 

a) Talk to him;

b) Pretend to be alright;

c) Ignore him;

I knew alternative ‘A’ was the right one, and I knew that by doing so we would have a shot at working it out. But for the first time I used a mask, I pretended to be alright.

I swore to myself it would be the last time. I lied again because, after this, I continued using it. And he kept disappointing me. I tried to talk and he ignored me.

I always assumed that love died overnight. That I would wake up and then it would be simply… gone. How naive. This was worse than that. I grew to unlove him. Not hate, unlove. I wonder when I stopped caring completely. 

Fallon too unloved me. Standing in the same room felt as if we were miles apart. But I knew when he stopped; when he started with this gelid indifference. 

It wasn’t one of those ‘we stopped sleeping in the same bed’ cases. No, it was when he started planning without me. We were a team, and this feeling, it wasn’t simple hatred, no. I felt betrayed. This was our thing. Now we were consumed by solitude. 

He didn’t care anymore. I was the only one who still tried. So I confronted him one day - my second mistake. 

‘We need to talk,’ I started short and clear. ‘About what?’ ‘You already know, please don’t pretend to not understand.’ My voice made me feel like I was begging, and this was partially true. 

‘I won’t,’ he answered stiffly, sharply ‘but I don’t want to talk to you’. The venom in his mouth slithered easily, and it stung me. 

‘I’m making an effort here, Fallon’ ‘Well, I don’t see it.’ he said like it was nothing and my eyes started to burn. 

He knew me all too well, how scared I was. He knew all my fears and had my demons on leashes. I was vulnerable and bare to him, my skin was some sort of second home. 

‘I’m too easy to make you entertained, am I right? Too dull.’ he never answered. My first tear fell. 

‘But tell me, just tell me this.’ I stopped suddenly and he looked at me - actually looked at me for the first time in months. ‘Why did you give up? When… did I’ the last part came in a murmur, so silent I wondered if he heard ‘stopped being enough for you?’ 

I noticed when he stopped caring, but this… it was always stuck in the back of my mind. 

Fallon stiffened and opened his mouth slowly, but no sound came out. We spent a few minutes there, silent. I knew he was trying to think of the right words. It didn’t bother me that he wasn’t going to say what he thought. It didn’t bother me at all. 

‘You didn’t support me. You got me at first… but then… you, you stopped.’ he hid his face, ashamed ‘I was desperate, I didn’t know what to do.’ 

‘Then you stopped talking to me because you were desperate?’ I felt wrath boiling up inside me. ‘You stopped depending on me! And we were a team!’ 

‘See, you always do this! I always open up and you get angry! Why can’t you try to understand me? Why can’t you feel sympathy for me?’ Fallon cried. 

‘Because you were selfish! You are so selfish it sickens me! You didn’t care for me, for us! I always cared for you!’

‘But you didn’t understand me at all! You never bothered to try!’ 

‘What do you mean “I never bothered to try?” You are insane! I always tried to help you’

‘But you didn’t know me! I thought you were going to see me, the true me, but you didn’t.’

The last part was said with so much hurt I felt bad, maybe it was true. Maybe I could’ve done more. Sadly, my temper got the best of me.

‘But you didn’t have to stop talking! You made me talk! You know how much I hate to and I talked about everything! Everything! And you didn’t even answer me back!’

‘I was tired of you!’ He finally said it. 

‘You needed me all the time. I felt suffocated. It ate me inside and I grew into this… into this…’ He tried to compose himself. ‘And you… you did this to me. You made me this… pathetic thing’. 

Sadness left without a trace, now there was only anger. Violent anger. At least it wasn’t the endless void. At least it was… something.

This bitterness made me sick. I felt disgusted with myself and even worse, I felt proud. 

Because I was right, he always was tired of me. Bored. 

‘I knew it.’ I was done here.

‘Wait, where are you going?’ He asked, terrified. ‘I’m done here.’ 

‘We’re not done yet, you can’t leave like this!’ His voice was desperate, he was as scared as I was. ‘I’m sorry, I-I-I didn’t mean to say it like that… it’s just that… it hurts. It hurts when you show your true self to the one person you think will love you and… they don’t. I just-‘

‘I want you to leave.’ I cut him short. 

‘What-‘This is my house. And I won’t say it again. Leave. Now.’ 

It was strange how quiet he got after this. I didn’t expect this contradiction. Perhaps I truly didn’t know him as well as I thought. 

And not knowing him well enough was my third mistake, because he left. I never thought he actually would. 

I was relieved at first. That I wouldn’t have to deal with a nuisance anymore. 

I expected freedom, but the feeling of drowning aggravated. And the grief came back. And then I stopped sleeping. And eating. And I wanted to scream but no sound came out. And I wanted to be helped and cared for. And I wanted to beg him to not leave me alone with my thoughts. 

I missed him, too. 

I felt numb and not real. This was one of the downsides of working at home, no one spoke to me. I wondered if I was alive at all. 

It got so bad that one night I dreamed of him. We were together at the fireplace with the corpse of our love. It was already dead for a few hours and our eyes were both wet, but we were together, at least.

I whispered ‘please don’t leave me’ softly and as I waited for his answer he tasted my mouth and I scented the salt on his lips. When we looked at each other I felt as if we were the only solid thing in the entire universe.

And we were safe. Our love was nursed back to life with the warmth of the hearth. 

I woke up and for the first time, I sobbed. I thought I knew what heartbreak was; I was wrong.

Now, I felt something. I felt haunted by his ghost. I should’ve been smarter, how could I not know he would eternally be with me? My house was now a painful memory, a sanctuary of him. Even my skin, which was not a long time ago marked by him. My lips kissed too many times, my hand gently held too many times. 

And I waited for him, in death and pain. I never got over it, because the silly, youngster inside of me thought that a love story would mean that I would have a happy ending, but I don’t think this type of thing happens in real life.

Maybe it does, but I think some people are simply not made to be happy.