Everybody leaves

Prince struggles with letting people in and may have just lost a real gem because of this.

EVERYBODY LEAVES

 

How often should one open the door to their heart? How often should you let people in? When am I allowed to shut everyone out?

Laying on the brown sofa, I heard Sandie repeatedly bang the door quietly. Her ability to be both angry and gentle was unsurpassable. I could hear the anger in her.

Sandie outside my door was nature’s articulation of the struggles I had been going through for the past few days. I couldn’t open that door, I had to keep fake-sleeping. Opening the door to her would be indicative of me opening my heart to her, I couldn’t.

The last person I’d let in didn’t clean out her shoes before coming in. She’d just been ankle deep in a toxic, mud-soaked relationship, and she didn’t scrape the dirt off her heels. What I’d expected to be a mountain of emotions and being an all-time low period. I was stranded in a valley of constant disappointments. She had walked all over my heart with those same shoes, leaving a trail of dirt at every cranny.

She jumped out the window at the slightest sight of Truth. Wallowing in constant lies had made the truth a hard concept for her to stand, she left me all messed up.

Thing is, I was already messed up before she came in, I was trying to put my house in order, cleaning up the mud that had glued to the previously shiny tiles.

Ann wasn’t the first person to leave, they all did. Whenever they noticed I’d begun to mean the words I said, they’d walk out the same way they came in.

There was only one constant variable in the equations, me!

The realization of this problem had helped me solve it.

If I would never be good enough for a woman, why try?

Why allow them in, only for them to run out after the true me had been revealed?

Why go through the joy that love brings if the greater, more prolonged and excruciating pain of their rejection was inevitable?

Why allow myself to fall asleep beside someone, when I knew after I closed my eyes, she’d fall into the arms of another?

The solution was simple, shut everyone out!

Sandie still stood at the door knocking. I was in, she knew I was, I knew that she knew I was. I was avoiding her, she knew.

Why was I avoiding her? That was probably the question that was driving her crazy.

 

Everything had been going perfectly between us, maybe too perfectly. I shut everyone out but this tall dark-skinned Idoma beauty had decided to break down my walls.

I’d begun to smile again. My face lit up when she spoke. And then all the other symptoms started showing �" the longing for her voice, yearning for her presence, being kept in complete awe of her eyes when I looked into them, craving for a taste of her lips, the whole cycle had begun.

I was almost neck-deep in before I noticed. I had to stop it. I could afford to sink no further or I’d be in over my head, drowning in the ocean of love.

She stopped knocking, I heard footsteps walk down the stairs and back up again. I then heard one more knock, this knock spoke more volume than the others.

 It was as though she was saying ‘If you don’t open this door, you will lose me’. I knew I had to make my decision at that moment. I stood up, my legs were heavy as was my heart. I walked to the door and put my hand on the handle, contemplated turning it but then I turned around.

 I’d been too scared to allow her in, she’d see the real dirt-filled scarred me, she’d be disappointed. Either that or she’d mess me up more than I already was. In both cases, I’d be heartbroken.

As I walked away from the door, I felt a sharp pain in my chest, like a hammer shattered something in there, like the heart had been...broken.

Maybe I’d underestimated how deep I was in this ocean, maybe I was already head over heels in love.

I was already experiencing the same pain I dreaded, the only way to solve this problem now was to let her in.

I ran back to the door and this time without thinking, I twisted the knob.

“Hello Sandie”

She wasn’t there. Another sharp pain in my chest. She was gone for good! I checked her trail, there were no traces of mud in it. What if she wasn’t like the rest? What if she was the exception to ‘everybody leaves’?

Author's Note

This piece is centred around the question of how often one should let others into their heart?

What is your view on that and the story in general