I don't know how it started. Maybe it was with my friends' persistence and interfering nature, which I allowed to my own dismay. Maybe it was my pride, which had never gotten in the way of my love life before. Maybe it was the very notion of heartbreak that drove me to make the bad choices I made. The truth is, I don't know. All I know is that I still love her and I'd do anything to win her back.
I laugh because my friends think am crazy. But they don't understand how amazing she made me feel. My naturally cold body would warm up at the sight of her. My hands would sweat and my heart would stop for a second and every time, I would see her through this self-made perception of perfection.
She could never hurt me, I was a hundred percent certain. I trusted her, even when she told me not to, but just like any other stereotypical person, I believed I could change her, show her that I trusted her enough to never hurt me, to never cause me any harm. (Never, but I was wrong)
She was so beautiful, so carefree, her laughter used to make me nervous and excited all at the same time. The first time we made love and the first time she declared her love for me, that was the day I opened myself up to love and all the worldly possibilities. Nothing could compare to the joy we shared for those first few weeks, those steamy nights of passion. Absolutely nothing.
But our love and our lives were headed in two different directions as we would later come to learn. When I was scared and she'd take my hand into her small warm ones, confidence and courage would grow in me and like the brutal surge of a waterfall, I would rise to my feet (hypothetically, of course) and face another day.
She brought so much joy into my life. She was classy and sexy, her beautiful flawless face, that awesome sight of her full bosom, her small petite body and her soft green eyes. Combined, she was like a model out of a playboy magazine. Elegant but sexy as hell.
We had so much fun together. God, we had so many firsts. You'd think that at this day and age you've done everything but with her, every experience was new. It was so amazing sharing all that with her. She was the perfect partner.
I don't know when things changed, I can't pinpoint it really... but when she left, I buried myself in such a deep hole of self-pity and depression. I started drinking. I'd take gallons of vodka and wonder how the hangovers or the extreme cases of dehydration did not kill me. I would go days without eating and wonder how that did not kill me. I would black out in strange places after nights of drinking sprees, still wake up to wonder how I was still breathing.
At one time, I reached the climax of all of my pain, took a sharp shard of glass and jabbed the jagged edge on the back of my palm in an attempt to focus my mind from the emotional pain I desperately wanted to escape from. My palm swelled up like an inflated balloon and I was in constant physical pain. The pain helped for a while because every time my heart would come awake, I would put pressure on the swollen palm and the physical pain would be so much, I'd forget the emotional pain, but she didn't know. She didn't know how much I loved her.
I wanted to get rid of the heartbreak of losing her so desperately and torturing myself was the only way I knew how to punish myself for the anguish I had caused her. I was afraid of how deeply she loved me, how much of herself she gave up to be with me, the people she left and hurt in attempts to be with me. God, she loved me.
But being the egocentric fool that I was, I never quite saw it. I just thought she was with me for other reasons, which I can't really think of.
My friends, oh such dear friends I have, told me to leave her. They said she was the wrong girl for me. They said she'd end up hurting me and that I loved her way more than she loved me. The moment we would fight, one of them would find a woman to hook me up with. I would not do anything because all I needed was my girl, my wife. Not a consolation fuck. I just wanted her to find me and tell me that she loved me.
We had been together for so long, we had been practically married. We had dreams of a future together. Dreams to this day, that still live and breathe as I do. I used to tell her that she belonged to me; that she was the love of my life and she is. She is mine. She is the love of my life. But I lost her because at some point, I stopped listening to my inner voice and started listening to my friends. The things they would say would get inside of me and stick there. But now I know better than to listen to them.
Why would they think she was wrong for me? Didn't they see how happy she made me? Is this what they wanted to see? A broken, desperate part of myself that I hate to look at in the mirror? Does this version make them happier? Does it satisfy their need to see my wife out of my life? Like I said, oh such dear friends I have.
I should have listened to her. She was right about everything. These people pretended to be my friends, they wanted things for me that I had no desire for, they wanted me to be with women of their choice. Women of their choice! As though they had a say in my life about whom I could or could not be with!
I can't believe how blind I was, all this time thinking and believing that they cared for me and only wanted the best for me. In my head, I still want to believe that everything they said, how well they managed to brainwash me, it was all out of good intention. But deep down I know, none of them have a clue as to what love is. They have the idea, but not a real life experience because if they did, they would have vouched for me.
They all saw what they wanted to see and in a matter of time, my clarity blurred. The only person who saw the truth for what it was, was my wife. She tried to tell me, but I never listened closely enough to actually do something about it.
Now where are those friends? When am alone in the house I got for myself and my wife because we broke up. Where are these so called friends? Do they know that when I'm alone in this house, all I think about is her? Do they understand the intensity of my heartbreak? Do they honestly believe that hooking me up with someone else will somehow erase her from my heart or my mind?
I've always been in a losing battle with my heart. My mind and body wants one thing, but what my heart says, when the stupid organ decides to express itself, is what goes. Otherwise, I am always stuck in physical, psychological and emotional pain.
I hate my days because from morning when I wake up, to night when I go to sleep, she's a constant thought in my heart and in my mind. I see her face. I imagine the conversations we would be having if she were here. I play the sound of her laughter in my head. I hear her disapproving tone when I do something stupid. Tell me that is not love.
Since we broke up, every day has been a struggle. A struggle to take a day at a time. Sometimes I think that if I don't die, because at some point I stopped taking care of myself, my heartbreak will kill me. She doesn't understand it when I explain it to her. I wish I could take her hand and put it in my heart to make her feel just how desperate and eager I am to have her back in my arms.
She's dating now and it kills me because she moved on and I am still stuck here, loving her, wanting her back. She was always stronger than me. Much more controlled where I was impulsive and embarrassingly expressive. I hated those days. I used to call her a robot. She would wear this stone face of a mask and look me straight in the eye. It made me defenseless. It scared me. It was the face of someone who did not care about me.
During our struggle in failed attempts to work things out, we would get drunk and fight. We would argue for hours about nothing. We were quick to forget how dysfunctional we were, all the while blinded by the love we shared. We'd wake up the following morning, ignore the unpleasant fights, refuse to take responsibility of the life our relationship gave us. Recollections of the previous night would steal the courage to talk about our fights ... and that slowly killed us. It was a pinch of a hole in a water balloon. Eventually, all the water would slowly run out.
I don't know if it did completely, but she says she still loves me. I believe her because I still love her. But she's with someone else now. The thought of it drives me crazy. When she's not at work, I wonder if they're together and the thoughts of what they could be doing drives me insane. I feel like I want to go out there and find her, go down on my knees and beg her for forgiveness.
I can't push it though. I lost that right the day she walked out of my life. Since then, my life has been a rollercoaster of a nightmare. One night I remember I went out with a friend, we had so much to drink we got lost and spent the night in the car. I even got used to waking up smelling like death because of the liquor I would consume. I would open my eyes, unable to recognize where I was. I dreaded going home because of our memories. I dreaded touching my computer because of all the pictures and videos I have of her, of us.
I dreaded waking up to such a sharply intense pain. But I did, and somehow, months later, I am still alive. I don't know my progress so far, if there is any to speak of. I don't have the energy to do anything anymore. Sometimes I want to sleep the whole day because in my dreams we're together. In my dreams, a mirage of our lives together is intact.
I know it’s pathetic. But I can't help it. I hate to see her moving on without me. I wanted to try, but I knew I would fail so I've never really applied much effort. Random sex hasn't helped. Alcohol postponed the pain temporarily but when sobriety hit, so did my problems and my misery.
I made her so miserable. I deserve this hell am going through. I am not worthy of her love. That looser she's dating actually deserves her more than I do. I don't want to separate them. I want it to end naturally, but sometimes I wish I could insist on a break up. But the only thing that will do is push her even further away.
A mutual friend told me to take a day at a time, to be patient, but a day feels like the goddamn 365 days of the year. An hour after I text her without a reply feels like a freaking century. I don't want her to see or understand my pain because I put her through worse. I know the whole thing of her getting a girlfriend is an attempt to resist me. Sometimes it works, I think. Mostly, it feels like she never wants to come back. But her heart belongs to me. That is what I tell myself.
Yes, I did love her. I loved her; intensely, insanely, miserably and irrevocably so. I loved her. It didn't matter what she did, who she f*cked, how many times she'd break my heart, ignore me or make me miserable, in attempts to make up for how unhappy I had once made her. I understood. I gave her the chance, the opportunity to make me miserable, so long as she came back to me, when she was done. That's how deeply in love I was with her.