Ariadne

***

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

 Who is the monster of them all?

***

Solitude has been your salvation a thousand times over, yet in the poverty of words, you began to paint yourself... empty of words, devoid of dreams... desolate of love and cloaked in a mantle colored with hatred. And you hated so much that you lost track of time... and lost yourself.

A bit of black... the ultimate mourning that the soul can give... the color of your blood after each battle lost with Him.

A bit of blue, for every tear aimlessly shed into the downy pillows, which absorbed every unfulfilled desire and every hope shattered by that grand Him.

That blue... darkened by so much depth that it envelops your eye, is nothing else but the ocean you have crossed so many times and which initially you feared. But you managed to traverse it only for him to abandon you on an island... and you cried out for Him, tried to swim the ocean but your soul was amputated by all the love you had offered him... you returned, battered by the storms that wouldn't let you move forward... each wave overwhelmed you and left you powerless...

A bit of red, intense as the passion that still burns in you... But in the aftermath of the fire, only ashes and memories remain... flickers of everything that once was. And you wish it still could be, but it all crumbles in an instant when you try to look at yourself in the mirror.

You add a bit of green... and suddenly you remember his eyes, in which you would lose yourself for hours on end. He was your balance when the silence was too painful. You wrapped yourself in the color when your soul felt frozen by so many disappointments, and you saw your image untainted by that dreadful black. The shadows disappeared, and only you remained in his eyes. And you saw yourself there forever, but time deceived you and you were just a moment in his sinister eternity.

As you mixe a bit of green, your mind wanders to the last time you saw Him. His eyes, once a source of comfort, were cold and distant. In that moment, you knew the Him you loved was gone, leaving a stranger in his place. The green on you canvas is tainted with the realization that love alone isn't enough to salvage a relationship gasping for air.

The white... you spread the white and let the color fade among the shadows of the other colors, just as you felt lost among the strangers around you who offered comfort only when it suited them. And then He came to gradually soothe any suffering. And the white gained brightness. Around you, you begin to see the lights that could save you from a banal life, but what you couldn't see was the end, where all these things finished. Purity had its covenant when he first kissed you... only that over time the covenant faded as much as the time, and when He left, all that remained was your shattered soul. But the white is a silent witness to your lost nights...

Your fingers pause as you contemplate adding more white. The color of purity and peace now seems like a cruel irony. Once,youe had believed your love was pure, untainted by worldly woes. But purity, you realize, is a concept ill-fit for the complexities of human emotions. People change, and with them, love morphs into something unrecognizable.

And you add a bit more gray... you find yourself in the duality between light and darkness because you never knew which side you were on... between certainty and uncertainty. That gray - neither the white you just covered with other colors nor the black that darkens your sight... your gray is a gray of emotions - confusion and indecision. It's your internal struggle that ignores your hope and prolongs your despair... It's the color of the storm clouds that loomed over the last days of your relationship. But it's also the color of the silver linings you have started to see. In the midst of your pain, you have begun to find yourself – the self that got lost while you were busy trying to be who He wanted you to be.

Now, as you paint, each stroke is a reflection of those moments. The black isn't just the color of mourning; it's the nights you spent staring at the empty side of the bed, wondering where it all went wrong. The blue isn't just your tears; it's the feeling of drowning in a sea of unspoken words and unresolved conflicts.

Your canvas becomes a labyrinth... the one in which He got lost and fought his demons, and you were his light. A labyrinth of colors in which you were the path, but now you paint your face, furrowed with so much pain gathered over time. Time... you no longer have enough to show him how much love fits inside you... but maybe he never wanted your time, and you wasted your tears in vain... Each brush is stained with the blood of colors, and you let them rest in the water glass... and you stop for a second to see it better, and it seems so imperfect and yet so perfect. The water is no longer just water... it becomes an ocean of memories that if you had the power to freeze, even for a minute, you would do so without a second thought because that ocean hurts and you no longer want so much pain in your soul. The colors dissolved in water become echoes of the whispers that He often told you... And you start to curse the day when colors seemed more vibrant, brighter... Your days were filled with laughter, and the nights... the nights were wrapped in the warm cocoon of embraces. You remember the scent of blooming cherry trees along that alleyway... A late spring afternoon when you, lost in your own thoughts, misplaced your gold necklace in a café on the outskirts of the city... and He came like a fearless Theseus to return your lost item. Overwhelmed by emotions, you couldn't even utter a 'Thank You'. You just smiled and embraced him, hoping he felt the same. He did feel, but his emotions, like untamed waves of the sea, quickly dissipated.

In those moments, the world seemed to be yours, a magical place where every gesture and word held significance. Long conversations into the late nights, walks under the starry sky, all seemed like promises of an everlasting love. But as all stories come to an end, so did yours, lost in the labyrinth of reality. Promises were replaced with silence, and certainties with unspoken questions

You put down the brushes and your soul breaks... but your fingers pass over the already painted canvas... you spread the colors and you feel small... so small... Often the night scared you, and you sought comfort in His words... and you felt like a child whose parents watched over their sleep... and you were happy... you were alive... you were safe... and you believed that he was your salvation, but you were his salvation... He managed to chase away his demons only thanks to you, but you got lost in the whole process...

You realize that he is no longer there and the pain reappears, staining again the canvas of your soul which is anyway torn into a thousand pieces... He would never have hurt you, not He whom you deeply and irrevocably fell in love with. You let him penetrate your thoughts and here you were wrong because you were just another thread to which he tied himself and which he let go just as quickly, and you remained wrapped in the fabric of the canvas...

You turn to take more black because that's what you feel... your soul is weighed down by so many scars, and you feel you can't endure them anymore... but you turn around and see your face in the mirror... your smile is sad, your eyes are almost closed and your face is furrowed by so many tears that have left deep marks on your cheeks, making their way to your sharp chin. Every line on your face has a story, which begins with a Him and ends with a monster. You suddenly stand up, letting the palette of colors fall to the floor, staining your Pink Floyd T-shirt, ruining your new jeans, and you go to the mirror. You look at yourself, you follow every wrinkle, you watch every tear, and you notice how your eyes become more fiery... Your hair remains on your face, then falling gently on your shoulders... For a second, you thought you were not you... The beauty you were so proud of, has disappeared... and with it and He... or rather, He disappeared with your beauty... you allowed him to steal it...

"You are better than that..." 

You whisper uncertainly... you start to repeat that endlessly, believing that you will gain strength, that you will manage to get over it and finish what you started... to make your self-portrait...

Although the minutes in front of the mirror seemed endless, you decide to return to finish your work... but you notice the chaos of the canvas and realize that although you thought you were innocent, you also made mistakes. And you realize that all you want is actually to paint your suffering left by him, hoping that at some point he will see it. But you do this for yourself... And you ask yourself:

"Who is the monster among us?"

But you know the answer so well, Ariadne...