[H.S] Shots

Spaces

Something is different every time I come home.

It feels different, like the air surrounding the constraints of my house is building up an extreme amount of pressure around me. With every step I take I feel as if I’m being pushed back, and every step forward ends up a battle between my body and my heart.

There was a time where I believed this was because the hours of the day felt longer and I pushed my body past its limits. Coming home felt more like a chore for me, because my nights consisted of extra work at the office and a nearly one hour drive back home.

But the more I’ve tried to figure out why there was an uneasy feeling in my chest and a pit in my stomach whenever I walked past the front door, I’ve began to realize that it wasn’t the long hours or the agonizing drive back to town that made my home feel different.

It was Y/n. She’s different.

She isn’t here with me anymore. I often find myself feeling alone, resorting to bottles of wine or champaign to keep me off the brink of insanity. She used to always be with me, I can’t remember a time she wasn’t by my side. She was everywhere I turned, with her hand in mine, lips against my skin, her soft voice muttering the three words that consumed our relationship.

Those times when she was there for me, it was almost strange for us to not be together. We were a package, there was barely anything that was “I” anymore, it was always a “we.” And that was something that began to scared me. I was unappreciative of love, unappreciative of affection and the feeling a woman had given me. I was so immune to the euphoria it gave me that I had moved onto other things. I put my love life second.

She was never a first choice to me anymore. She was in the back of my mind, pushed far away from the life I was living. She could tell I was disconnected from the relationship we had, but she kept telling me she knew I loved her and that I was completely blinded by ignorance. She refused to leave until I told her I didn’t love her anymore.

I didn’t tell her that. I couldn’t.

It took me months for reality to hit—when I started feeling lonely and misplaced. I needed her, I needed what she had given me. It kept me sane, it kept me grounded. She gave me a set of direction, to know where to end up by the day’s end. Without her, there really is no start of a new day, or an end of a night. Every day is the same, and there was no sense of time.

Nothing moved without her.

I frown as I’m greeted with silence and complete emptiness. A place where I used to feel comfort and love has turned into a place that makes me feel anything but whole. It’s as if a part of me evaporates and every inch of me feels cold and numb.

If I were to just make her understand how wrong I’ve been, maybe the hurt in my heart and the squeezing in my chest would disappear. If she would to just greet me at the door, the way she always had upon my arrival, maybe the parts of me that died along with my relationship would begin to feel whole again.

But I never know what to say to her. I never know what to do. Because even though the both of us live in the same square feet, reaching out to her is as hard as ever. And it’s all because I never appreciated the times I was able to.

I slowly head to our bedroom, desperate to fight for the woman I had fallen in love with. I’ve waited too long to fix the pieces I’ve broken, and I’m convinced that if I were to waste another night with an empty side to the bed, I would completely break, too.

“Y/n?” I call, slowly opening our bedroom door.

“Y/n, baby, I really have to talk to y—“

I halt when I hear the voice of my love through the bathroom door. Her voice, the delicacy and sincerity of it, filling the increasingly deep spaces around us, almost patching up every crack between us.