And some days, you feel so empty, you fill the voids with thoughts that end up making you feel more broken than feeling nothing at all. And some days, you feel so lost that you wander in the memories of those good old days rather than being nowhere at all.
On the way to the airport two years from now, I was empty. I wanted to run back to you and stop you from letting me go or beg you to make me stay even for a few more seconds, but I didn't. Ugly tears of pain and heartbreak pelted down my eye along with the black stroke of mascara I had so thoughtlessly applied.
As soon as I stepped out of the old housing estate, my legs felt shaky with the impact of pain in my chest and my throat felt itchy with the restraint to look back, knowing you were watching me leave from the window ledge.
I was drowning, breaking, and falling with each step I took away from you. Whoever said young love is the easiest to forget were bullshitting their arse. Because it damn near felt like dying. My knees almost gave up as I stepped out of the rusty old gates and wrapped my arms around me to shelter myself from the crisp evening breeze. A sudden flash of lightning rumbled through the gray skies above, making me jump a little.
I took the last chance to look back at the window. We had spent many evenings lost in the strings of your music and my heart. The window was closed off, and so was you.
"Goodbye, Violet," you whispered while I shook my head frantically. I no longer controlled my tears and let them succumb to their end. "Go, and never turn back."
I never wanted anything as intensely as to erase the echo of those words in my memory.
Poor Violet, you fall in love so instinctively, not knowing when to pull yourself out of it.
Just as my knees were about to hit the ground, his protective arms wrapped around me, shielding me from the blistering winds of loss and hurt. And for the second time that day, I wished those arms were yours. Adrian placed a soft kiss at the back of my head, pulling me away from the heartache, and then I was inside the car, reeling away from the town.
I buried my face against his chest as he rubbed soothing circles on my back. Words of hope, reassurance, and a promise of a new world kept reverberating from his lips as I cried for a love that would always cut deeper. The scent of familiarity mixed with clean linen engulfed me as he pushed away a tear-stained hair from my face.
"Does love always hurt this much?" I croaked out. "Have you ever felt like this?"
Adrian released a strangled sigh, looking down at me. "I guess I'm yet to know, but when I do, I hope we will get over that together."
The love I experienced was venomous. It took away every sweet thing I wrote about love in my poems, then left me with bitterness in the dark. I would never wish the same for Adrian or anyone.
Adrian's calm heartbeat vibrated against my ear as he held me through my pain, and I eventually drifted off to sleep.
"Go, Violet. Go and never turn back."
Those were the last words when you let me go, and they would always be a reminder of the perfect self-ruination.
-Violet