So Impersonally
The importance of being honest with yourself is one thing that should never be forgotten.
He never loved you, and you know this.
You knew it from the moment when both of you were lying on his bed, an unusually warm April afternoon, and you were already on the verge of tears but he offered no empathy, no comfort.
You knew it from the moment he said, “I’m a heartbreaker,” and you replied, “I bet you’re good at breaking hearts.”
You knew because your heart broke right then and there, but you chose to ignore it.
You continued to believe your own little lie—you know, the one where you loved him and he loved you back—and so the remnants of your heart shattered again when he told you (so impersonally) that he’d found someone else.
You, the hypocrite, cried and cut because every moment you had spent with him had held a dark premonition of this day coming.
You weren’t good enough, and you knew it.
You told him you were different from all the others, you told him you would not let yourself fall, but oh how you fell.
You fell deep into a dark pit, those evil thoughts seeping back into your mind from the weak cage that had held them, a cage called hope.
There was still a shred of that cage holding something in, one single ray of sunlight in your cold, dusky world.
He still wanted you to leave your home and move in with him.
He still seemingly cared enough about you to recognize the fact that it was absolutely necessary for you to get out of the hell you currently call home because that was breaking you down as much as (if not more so than) his ripping your heart out of your chest and crushing it under his bony heel, smiling as he held the hand of his new love.
You were still allowed to be his roommate.
Almost exactly two weeks later, just as you had finished washing the blood off the minuscule shards of your heart (an impossible puzzle) and the blood off your arms (the scars formed nicely) he pulled a Nagasaki on you.
There would be no apartment together in the city.
There would be no late nights and drunken parties together.
He decided he wasn’t ready—when he was the one who had first suggested you two should shack up together—and the small pieces of your heart burst into flames, but the tears that spilt and the blood that flowed could not douse the blaze.
You found it hurt to think, hurt to breathe, it hurt to be.
You found that your fingers were cold and numb because your heart, now nonexistent, could not pump the blood (obviously).
By now the harsh reality of summer was nearing but it didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
You saw him at a show you didn’t even feel like going to, all over his new flame as you were still smoldering.
You became the world’s greatest actor that day, smiling and laughing as if nothing were wrong.
He clearly believed you because he didn’t say a thing.
Or maybe he just didn’t care.
Later on, he apologized to you (so impersonally) as you sat there, disbelieving every single word coming from his drunken fingertips.
He was always drunk.
You hated that.
You hated so many attributes of his, but never the boy himself.
Finally, what was left of your heart (a few scattered ashes, now) coalesced together to form a hard little black ball.
You couldn’t appreciate the rebirth of nature in spring like you once used to, and your favorite flower, the lilac, the soft beautiful purple and white blossoms of the lilac, didn’t even bloom on the bushes outside your hell (home).
Maybe they were linked to you in some mysterious way, perhaps they didn’t want to see the world either.
You sit here now, trapped inside when you know something great is going on right outside those heavy maroon doors.
You can smell it on the still warm end of May air.
You can feel it on your skin and in that empty cavity that once held the organ vital to your existence.
You know when you go home tonight, when your pointless job has been done, you’ll go to your haven, your bedroom, where your pillow has soaked up so many salty tears (so impersonally) and take in the empty white walls that echo your sighs.
You’ll take in the empty bookshelves and the cardboard boxes still on the floor, still full of personal items that you now realize truly mean nothing, still packed because you had been so fucking eager to get out of this place.
They’ll never be unpacked as long as you’re still living here.
A symbol of something.
You’ll bite your tongue so hard it bleeds to hold back the scream you can feel building up.
That’s all right, you like the taste of blood, especially your own.
You’d love to taste his blood, licking it off your lips as you rip him apart.
But no, you don’t want that.
You don’t know what the hell you want, you never have and you never will.
What you wouldn’t give to feel again.
You suppose you’ve forgiven him, because he is after all only human, and we humans are simple selfish creatures you find it hard to relate to.
You’ve entered a lovely state an anhedonia, a place in your life devoid of any pleasure and you can’t say you like it here, but you’ve grown accustomed.
You can’t hope for someone else to come along and make it all better again because he crushed your Pandora’s box, trapping hope beneath the rubble until it suffocated or starved to death (an agonizing death, no doubt).
You can’t pray for relief from this misery because you don’t believe in any being of higher power—we’re all here on our own.
No one is looking out for you.
What’s left to do but wish?
Don’t wish upon a star, that’s only a ball of fire, so much further away than the drive to his house (ninety-five miles).
You wish only in your mind, your sad demented mind, that maybe he’ll realize that he made a mistake and you need him and he needs you.
Then, perhaps through spontaneous regeneration, your heart will appear again and you can smile because the water’s blue, the earth is green, and the sun is shining.
Or you wish that maybe, one day while you’re driving your car and tearing up from some sad song lyric you hear coming from your CD player, you won’t see that Mack truck coming toward you at sixty-seven miles per hour and it slams into your side of the car, killing you instantly (but so impersonally).
