Why make up stories when life itself is so....interesting. Relive these events with me as I record my own personal experiences growing up. You never know what you might find, sometimes all we need is a bit of perspective.
"Hi Ashali," I had this psychotic grin on my face like the joker himself "what's up?"
"Just combing out my hair" she replied, "and you?"
"I'm just here chillin" I made a failed attempt to sound 'cool', you could hear the uncertainty in my voice.
"Yeaaaa, I bet you are"
Silence. But I was accustomed to this silence, she was never very verbal at times and I tried my best not to push, but sometimes it couldn't be helped. Even though our relationship was totally digital I had this feeling somehow that she wasn't being genuine, and so I broke the silence and everything else shattered with it.
"Hey, Ashali..."
"...mhm..."
"You know I love you right?"
Silence, but the silence spoke volumes. In these moments of silence, she expressed more of her true self than she ever did verbally. I learned that although people can control what they say while they speak, they sometimes can't control the silences they create. The empty space where words would be, masked their thoughts and emotions that they struggle to express effectively, but depending on what you were talking about before the silence you can know exactly whats going to happen, it's not a words thing, it's a feeling.
"...Hacim...."
"Shit Shit Shit what did I do now?" I thought
"Hacim?"
Reluctantly I answered, not knowing what would happen but I was dead sure I wouldn't like it.
"Yes love?"
"You need to stop.....It's about time you move on....we can't live like this," and after a second of silence which felt like an eternity, she hit me with the iconic line "you deserve better".
"I deserve better?....I deserve better?!?,"
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"What was this girl telling me right now?....After 4 years...4 years you drag me along, leach my time, my energy, the little allowance I got, you took it all. I GAVE YOU MY BEATING HEART AND YOU WALKED OVER IT LIKE IT WAS NOTHING, LIKE IM NOTHING?!? am I not worthy of love? at least a portion of what I gave out am I not privy to some of it? Am I that ugly or bad of a person?..."
I tried to tell her all this, I really did, but after I snapped out of my comatose trance the words somehow got lost along the way from my brain to my mouth and all I could hear myself say was
"Why?.....what did I do?.....what can I do?"
followed by the iconic phrase
"I can change....please"
I wasn't ready for this, no one could ever be ready for this. I couldn't even cry. When my dad came back he met his phone where he left it, he started his van and we drove home in silence. I just sat there lost in thought, holding back the tears that were a few minutes too late, holding back the lake of emotions pressing on these dams I call eyes. When I got home I spent most of my time in my yard, crying, staring at the stars pacing up and down, crying.
Did I say crying?....my bad I meant dying.
I was dying on the inside and I didn't know what to do, who to turn to, what to say. It was at that moment I realized that at the end of every day you are truly by yourself, no matter how many friends you have because no one can share your mind, no one can share your pain.
"So this is loneliness? This is how I die without killing myself"
That night as I lay down in bed I couldn't sleep, because in between tears and sobs I kept wondering, "How could she say that so casually? How does one break a heart, watch it shatter and not care? What kind of monster does this?"
ButI was in love with this monster. No, I was in love all by myself, with an image of a person I fabricated out of my hopes and expectations. Things she could never live up to because she was never that in the first place. I was in love with the thought of her, of what she could be and could do but not what she was and what she did. It's not her fault that she couldn't fulfill these things, it was mine. It was all my fault for trying to overlook what she was and replace it with what I wanted, even if she gave me exactly what I wanted to see.
I closed my eyes and felt a tear squeeze its way out and slide down my face, past my ears and be reunited with its family on my pillow. As I drifted off to sleep I could hear the pitter-patter of raindrops on the walls. It was the rain, she gradually got harder as if beckoning me to join her outside.
"I can't....not tonight," I said as if the rain would be listening. I was drawing nearer to the borderline of being awake and being asleep and the rain got softer, it was as if she heard and understood my words. So I fell asleep with the empty feeling of my heart shattering into a million pieces and falling down the bottomless pit of my soul, constantly breaking throughout the fall until it was fine dust, never hitting the bottom.
