Her Worlds

Chapter 9

"I was frozen in place, mind completely blank. My heart was pounding so hard and so loud I was waiting for it to beat straight out of my chest. Can you hear it too? I can't help but vaguely wonder somewhere in the blank panic my mind was sent into.

'Viv?' Your soft voice is sadder than ever as you call my name.

I open my mouth to respond, but the words jumble up in my mouth and fail to come out as I stutter and look at you, before looking away, looking at anywhere but you. I couldn't stand the sadness when I was so used to seeing your sweetness and adoration. 

'Why?' It's all I can manage to croak out as I force myself to look at you again.

'Because,' you sigh, exhaustion and sadness settling into the undertones of your voice as you try to project a comforting calm, 'things are only going to get worse.'

My mind jumbled in an attempt to pick apart her words, to understand the vagueness of the sudden confession.

'What, what are you talking about? What is?'

You give me a soft, pitying smile as you simply reply, 'me.'

I try to keep the exasperation out of my voice as I urge you to explain.

'I'm only going to get more annoying, more difficult. I'm only going to push you away more. I'm only going to cause problems."

'I don't get it,' I can't stop my voice from breaking as my heart clenches and my breathing starts to become shallower and shallower.

'What don't you get? Can't you see that I'm pulling away?'

The lump quickly building in my throat makes it even more difficult to breathe, to talk, to think. I try to keep my body from shaking as I focus on replying, on understanding, but I can't. I can't understand.

'I'm going to keep talking about shit that you'll get tired of. I'm going to get more difficult to deal with,' you continue on, avoiding making further eye contact with me as you keep yourself out of arm's length.

'I, I really don't understand what you want me to do, I'll listen to you but I can't help you. There's only so much I can do,' I can't stop the first tear from falling down my cheek, but I quickly wipe it away before you can see.

'I want to pull away. Completely. Like not talk anymore.' You pause, giving me time to listen to my heart completely shatter. 'But I also don't. Like, I want to save you the trouble of being my friend but I'm scared of losing you.'

I squeeze my eyes shut to stop myself from watching the room spin and try to gather my bearings, and to try to stop myself from falling to my knees and start begging. 

Taking deep breaths, I try to ground myself as I open my eyes to look at you. 'It's your decision to make. It's your choice. If you want to pull away, do it, but you'll have to deal with the consequences.'

I mentally scream at myself for the passive-aggressive jab that I couldn't stop from passing my lips as the bitterness and hurt started to set in. I have to be mature, no passive-aggressive comments. She can make her own decisions about her own relationships, no need to be salty. A suffocating silence starts to set in as you stare at me, shocked.

'I, I just want to know why you're doing this,' I manage to squeeze out, even if I knew that you didn't owe me any explanation.

'I realized why everyone leaves,' your smile is just as bitter as me, and I fail to realize how much we were both hurting at that moment. ' I tried to pull away from Antonio because I was going to start with him but he didn't let me.'

'Going to start what with him?' I ask suddenly confused.

'Going to start withdrawing,' you say it so simply, as if it was normal.

A simple 'oh' leaves my lips as I scramble to pull myself together. It's too late, she's already decided to leave. She decided to leave probably hours ago.

'Why though? I don't get it, you make everyone promise not to leave you and then you try to leave everyone.'

'Because everyone leaves anyway. No one stays.'

'So you're going to leave me when I've made the effort to stay.'

I let out a shuddered breath, trying to keep calm as I run a hand through my messy hair.

'Everyone that I've given chances to stay has broken my heart.'

'So I am too. I'm going to leave because other people decided to leave.'

'No. But I don't want you to.'

I close my eyes to hide the fact that I was rolling my eyes as I slowly grew more and more defensive to protect myself. It was a bad habit of mine that I noticed over the years, that I would grow sharper and meaner whenever I felt like someone was hurting me on a too-close-for-comfort level. Almost like a stupid and dumb self-defense mechanism.

'You think I'm just going to walk away without feeling anything? Frustration or anything?' I can't stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth and silently curse myself thoroughly.

You pause, as if shocked by this revelation, before replying meekly, 'I'm sorry.'

I sigh, trying to push down the anger. 'I just don't see or understand what you were thinking.'

'I was thinking that you would leave and I would be heartbroken again.'

'And leaving me before I left you wasn't going to hurt you? You say that like you weren't going to feel a thing in leaving me when in reality, we both know that isn't true.'

I bite my tongue and force myself to squeeze my eyes shut as the words I stopped myself from saying swirl through my brain. You say that like you weren't going to feel a thing, you say that like you never cared about me, like you never loved me. Does this mean that you didn't mean it when you told me you loved me every night before we fell asleep? Before we hung up on our calls?

'You're right. But it would hurt less,' you pause, your eyebrows furrowed in thought as you tried to piece together what you were thinking. 'I think? No one has ever let me pull away so I don't really know.'"

.

.

.

I shudder, burrowing myself further under my cold blankets as if that would protect me from the pain. My phone was a heavy weight, a heavy reminder as I forced the words, the events, the emotions out of my mind. 

The tears wouldn't stop even as I tried to will them away, they only stopped when exhaustion settled in and I was once more floating in the blackness of my room, floating in the sudden blackness of my mind.

It was the first and only thing I was able to bring myself to write in months. 

The first and only thing I could bring myself to write was about you and how much it hurt. I'm sorry that my memory of you is tainted. I'm sorry I was so mean to you. 

God, I'm such a douche. 

I'm sorry. 

I love you.