Lights Out on this Relationship

       It was a fight unlike any they’ve had before. He didn’t yell or make excuses – leaving her no room to scream her frustrations. The connection didn’t lag, for once. Or maybe it did – but he was an unwavering pillar of silence, as stoic as a Greek statute. Or in this case, a French statute. She shivered from the chill of his indifference, 6 time zones away.

             “Do you still love me?” she asked. He shook his head, the movement startling his image on the laptop screen. The invisible hand gripped her heart tighter, squeezing. He didn’t offer an explanation and she couldn’t bring herself to ask. Her vision started to blur, and she couldn’t help but blink and let the tears spill. She hated herself for crying. She hated being the emotional one. It wasn’t fair. Her breath quivered as she tried to muster the courage to ask the inevitable question.

             “Are we breaking up?” she whispered. He paused. Did he look sadder? It was hard to tell when his face had been in a permanent grimace for the past hour of this video call. She waited, dread pooling in the pit of her stomach. When they first met, she loved that he took care with his words. Now, she resented it. Finally, his mouth opened in response, only to be silenced by a sudden blink of the screen and a shadow on her studio apartment. She stared at the black screen, willing it to turn back on. But it didn’t and the invisible hand around her heart started crushing her chest with an increasing rhythm of panic. Did we just break up? He’s going to think that I left on purpose. Why did the power have to go out now? She fumbled with her phone, opened the messaging app and typed a mess of a paragraph that wouldn’t send. No connection. No data. The invisible hand squeezed and squeezed until she couldn’t breathe.

             She needed to lie down. The white fur rug was soft and comforting. She laid down and curled into fetal position, trying to swallow the sobs choking her throat, feeling the wetness make trails down her face, gathering and matting the fur. Her incessant fridge was quiet. The hum of the laptop fan was gone. All she could hear was the sound of her own whimpers and the occasional distant blare of the traffic in the dark streets below. She closed her eyes and imagined a world blacker and more silent than the one that had quickly taken over her apartment and the city outside.

             In this new world, he didn’t exist. He hadn’t left her to go back to France for a job. She didn’t count on him returning a year later, like he said. She wasn’t diagnosed with depression and his mother didn’t become terminally ill. In fact, they had never met at all. He never came to her friend’s going away party. She hadn’t been drawn to his silent nature, wondering at the mysteries that could be coaxed. There was no flurry of romantic outings that summer, stargazing on worn picnic blankets, holding hands and lying together to count the real stars from the fake city lights… it hurt so much. She was sobbing openly now. Loud and desperate gulps of air echoing around the blanket of blackness that embodied her grief. She was no longer a person but a wave of feelings, crashing down and filling up the space around her. She struggled to breathe between sobs. Then darkness overtook.

             She woke up squinting against the blue light of the laptop glaring into her face. The fridge was humming in the background, its sound blending in with the honks of the city and the whirr of the laptop fan that had rebooted. A familiar symphony. Her face felt tight and swollen and her eyes strained against the brightness of her apartment. She wondered if that was how newborns felt coming into the world. Out of habit, she checked her phone. No new messages except a reminder from her mom to stop drinking so much green tea. He hadn’t wondered where she had gone. The invisible hand reached for her heart again.

             She deleted the unsent paragraph from earlier, cringing at the words she caught. Halfway through a less desperate sounding explanation for her sudden departure, she stopped. She was so tired. She was tired of waiting. She was tired of chasing after his busy schedule. Between his mom and his job, she hadn’t known where to fit for months. At the beginning, calls would come every couple of days, and then once a week, until he only talked to her when she begged. She wanted to help, but her desire to be involved in his problems was only another bother. She was beginning to feel like a nuisance – no, she’s been feeling like that for a while. Her life was no longer a movie with the two of them as the main characters. Over the past year, she had become an extra in his tragic life story. She barely saw her friends anymore, trying to make space in her schedule for long distance phone calls that never materialised. When was the last time she had done anything for herself? He was right to want to end it. But did it have to be on his terms?

             She tossed her phone and the half-formed message onto her bed and let out a deep breath. He hadn’t asked why she had disappeared, so she could send a message in her own time – maybe not at all. It was her choice – and it’s been a while since she made a choice solely for herself. She got up, stretched, and then walked to the bathroom to wash her face. She could feel the warm water dissolving the salt streaks, freeing her skin from its tight hold. She allowed herself to smile in the mirror, the movement of the muscles still unfamiliar. But it looked okay. She looked okay. And that made her feel like maybe, things could be okay again.

             The lights of the city below seemed to shine more vivid than before the power outage, as if they needed to make up for lost time. She shrugged on her winter coat, pocketed her wallet, and hesitated near the bed before turning away towards the door. Pulling on her boots, she felt the familiar itch to check for messages – for his messages – and her right hand reached absent-mindedly for her back pocket where she usually kept her phone. The emptiness startled her, then brought a reluctant smile to her lips – an exercise that was already starting to feel more familiar. She turned off the lights, then opened the door, stepping out into the bright hallway. Glancing back at her phone, nestled quiet amongst the darkened bedsheets, she felt the invisible hand stretching around her heart again. Then she closed the door and it retreated, leaving her free to walk out and away into the twinkling of the city lights.