Departure

Unexpected. Post-departure.

[Edited as of 5/19/12]

 

“I missed the sound of your voice.”

I called you late last night, drunk and stupid. I apologized. Not for anything in particular. Just because. In my stupor, I thought maybe it’d bring you out of your indifference; this embargo of all communication between us that seemed to arrive on a whim.

 

Synonyms for indifference: detachment, disinterest

 

This is the weekend after Thanksgiving. Saturday, I believe. You asked to come over, you just needed to see me. And I thought that meant something. And in retrospect, it did. Anyway.

This is the aftermath of that meeting.

I’m shaking. I can’t stop my hands from trembling, as if the ground underneath my feet is about to give way. You leaned in quick, kissed me on the forehead and I close the door behind you. An act executed as though it had been practiced. And maybe it had.

 

This will be the last time I see you. 

This will be the last time we lay together on my bed, skin to skin.

And when I say you, I don’t mean You. I mean you, explicitly.

 

I didn’t feel the warmth of your body leave me because you never got close enough for me to feel it. You kept yourself at a distance, as if you were afraid I would combust"crumble at the end of every sentence impending sentence"and accidentally be caught in the flames yourself.

 

If the words previous don’t satisfy You as a testament to my memory, I remember that night clearly. The way I knew I wouldn’t see you again. How you kept looking at the walls of my room rather than look me in the eyes, afraid you’d realize what you were actually doing to me.

 

Synonyms for coward: doormat, drip

 

Life went on. Professors taught and workers worked, just as people died and smokers smoked. Days wore on and nights swept in as they always did. Everyone still shut off the lights before they went to sleep and woke up the next morning just to do it all over again.

The most I could do at that moment was to do the same. Go on as if nothing had happened and it was just a phase. And so I hypnotized myself for a short time.

 

I became entirely reclusive. However, in time I grew weary of the confines of my room, helplessly fearing social interaction. And I found my cure was the same indifference that broke me. Rather than put on shoes and face my fear, I found ways to delay the next morning. I took the pills I needed to take and downed the beers I needed to make something of my sleep"a Russian roulette of sorts. I’ll admit I was a little scared of what came after. I wouldn’t disagree with you if you were to say that it was stupid, that one day I’d be emotionally healed and that you’d be nothing but a fond memory. That every day loved ones are lost, mostly permanently, and it’s simply a lesson you have to learn"to live with that absence. I wouldn’t disagree with you, but I’d tell you to shut the f**k up.

 

I’d like to generalize the repercussions of such a situation into two possible outcomes.

1. You enter an almost comatose-like state where depression weighs down on you in a way that makes you feel as though you carry all of humanity’s transgressions on your shoulders or
2. You shed a few tears and keep the person forever in your memory. You’d also decide to avoid said loved one. Or maybe you’d like to be friends in the near future.
        

Yet, most times you don’t get to choose. Option 1 was apparently deemed fit for me, and so began my ever-increasing decent into numbness. It was strange, how everything seemed to matter so little in comparison to one single event.

 

Some days it seemed as though I never woke up. As if my eyes were simply open while my mind and body remained dormant in unconsciousness. I simply walked through my days with blurred vision, as if I had microscope eyes I had just never cared to adjust. Out of focus. And I try to remind me, remind Myself, that at some point I’d have clarity. That it’d just be a waiting game.

 

I won’t say I didn’t occasionally burst from keeping everything in"trying to pretend like I was getting better; I will say that even though it seemed as though everything was falling apart, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew and occasionally reminded Myself that things would get better eventually. It was the waiting that killed me. The uncertainty of exactly when I’d no longer be haunted by the colour red, the memories of smiling faces on a beach or New York’s subways and streets.

 

As if it wasn’t clear enough already, these repercussions are relative to me and my feeble-minded being. This is the true outcome of heartbreak, or at least the particular breaking of my individual figurative heart. I couldn’t say the same of the death of a loved one. Though I could guess that the feeling is somewhat similar. It’s essentially the sentiment, the latter ranking a bit worse. 

Looking back on it all now, no one thought it would be this bad. That might’ve been the worst part"thinking that I’d be perfectly okay if something like this were to happen, if you were to leave me. As if I’d be able to just bounce right back after a few days and live as if you were just another social encounter gone wrong. Another embarrassing comment spoken out loud, leaving me to be devoured by my own anxieties. It was apparent before you even left that day that I was completely, utterly, and totally wrong in all aspects of that presumption. I was a fish out of water, gills clogged by your fingers as you continued to hold on, but at an arms length. You refused to keep me around, but wouldn’t let yourself release me entirely. And I held on, for obvious reasons. 

 

Maybe I’m starting to get it. Because I’m almost certain now.

That was the worst part. 

Author's Note

Still trying to really figure out where I'm going with this and how long each chapter would be.