I'll Never Know Why

He never gave me one reason for why he left - he gave me an avalanche of them. He wasn't ready to commit, we had nothing in common, he couldn't see a future for us, we would be better off as friends. It was quite powerful how such broad perspectives collapsed my life in a matter of minutes.

Each day faded right into the next, in my universe. There was no separation of days, but rather just the separation of two people who would no longer be together. I cannot even say that I took one day at a time because all of the days were exactly the same. No sunrise, no sunset. The time dragged on as if I was wheeling myself down an empty, abandoned corridor in a broken-down wheelchair; I was probably at an old insane asylum and there were probably restraints around my wrists and ankles. But I continued to go on with my daily routines, as recommended one should do after experiencing a traumatic event. I still took the bus to work, put in my eight hours, and returned home where I could finally release the day’s worth of pent up tears. Surviving all day without shedding a single tear was my most profound accomplishment back then.

My emotions were absent and a gaping hole was left rotting out the center of my chest. The pain was relentless and deep. It became so excruciating that it turned numb. It’s like an intense physical pain that sends one into a state of shock, and sooner than later you succumb to it and become numb. Nothing feels real, you don’t feel real. The world keeps on spinning but somehow you’re not on it with everyone else. You’re alone in your own galaxy, aimlessly floating around a black abyss. No stars; they had been burnt out by the very same person who annihilated the world you used to belong to. 

I kept asking myself “Why?” as if repeating it several millions of times would magically make an absolute answer appear. 

I tried to see things from his point of view in order to find my way to the answer I so helplessly longed for. Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough, or smart enough. Maybe I drove too fast or played the music too loud in the car; maybe he didn’t like the music but he never complained. Maybe my laughter was too boisterous (I’m sorry but you made me laugh like I once did as a carefree child). Perhaps he didn’t like how I looked without any makeup on, or perhaps I was rude for not eating much of the dinner on our first several dates - I could barely look at food without my stomach doing somersaults because I was so nervous around him; maybe I loved him too much and it scared him away.

Because of whatever his reason was, or two or three or one hundred, I had wasted too many of my days fantasizing about what had possibly gone through his mind to make him up and leave me. He did it like it was nothing, like it was easy, like he was starting a car or pushing a shopping cart around a grocery store. He did it like I was nothing, and that was one of the hardest pains that I ever had to go through. What had I done? What had I not done? 

I wanted so badly to switch minds with him, even for a minute. I was desperate to know a firm “Why?” but it broke my heart all over again to realize that I would never know. I wanted him to see inside my mind, to see all of the destruction he had left behind. Maybe then he would understand how his decision was wrong (more so the way he went about it); maybe then he would at least apologize for breaking my heart. 

No matter how much I wanted to know the exact reason for the sudden split, in the depths of my soul I always knew that I would never know. No matter how many times I cried in the shower or in my bed until I fell asleep, I would never have a concrete answer. It felt unjust that he probably didn’t mourn the same way I did, and that he would never see anything from my point of view. He obviously didn’t consider such a thing  before he cut the cord.

He would never tell me why he did it. After he took my heart and shattered it beyond repair, he disappeared like a magician performing his greatest show to date. He disappeared from my broken little planet. 

I have wasted more of my days imagining how I could ever possibly be capable of acting like someone didn’t exist anymore, but I could not comprehend it. Even with the worst of the worst people I have ever known in my life - the liars, cheaters, abusers - I found it impossible to see how one could drop someone else off the face of the Earth. 

As I healed throughout the years, which by the way never seems to end, I have tried to accept that maybe I am never supposed to see things from his point of view. I have been doing so well these days, that if I were to suddenly have my “Why?” answered in the full, concise truth, that I would break all over again and this time I would not recover. It's simply better this way. Not knowing. 

That was another thing he said to me on that very last day, the day my world seemed to end - "it's better this way."

And not soon enough, I've begun to accept that I would be scared if he were to ever see things from my point of view. I suddenly didn't want him to ever see it - the wasted days, months, years of my life crying over someone who never cared about me in the first place, the sheer embarrassment of it all. No, never. 

With that, things felt a little more just. I would never truly see things from his point of view in exchange for him never seeing mine. He will never know about my shame and that makes me quite powerful.