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Angry…? Sure it is safe to say I was angry. Enraged…? I was too apathetic to turn my anger into rage. Sorrow…? Well, I think that the sorrow came when the shock had worn off. Numb you ask? Oh, I was most defiantly numb. It was like I was dreaming. Not a soft, sweet dream, with wild flower fields and unicorns. Not a violent, harsh nightmare full of blood, disease and death. No not those, just a dream; realistic like taking a normal, boring day and covering it with a haze; a gossamer evil that was so thin and faint at first it was hard to notice. But in time, it was everywhere and soon there was no escaping it. It covered the coffee shops. It covered the schools. It covered the people, the cars, the clothing I wore … my own skin. It consumed like locust in the desert until all was the dust of the dream, until nothing seemed real anymore; not his love, his words, his actions. Everything had become a venomous lie leaving me numb and sleep walking through my days.

You might say all the trouble started that day, back in January, when my world went cold. When my faith in this democracy was uprooted and replaced with injustice. I suppose if you want to be fair, we should go that far back. Back to when the Ghoul got away with it. In reality, before that day things were good, a bit rocky sure, but nothing the two of us could not handle. Then again, in reality we are all just flesh and blood; in reality people care only for them selves. But in our world we had each other. In our world we said ‘we got this’ because two is less than three. In our world it was all going to work out. So I suppose that day was when reality set in. I remember the look on his face, before I left that night. It was the look of a man who loved a woman; the look of support. His solid eyes were filled with pure joy reassuring me that no matter the outcome we where going to be fine and he would still love me. I remember how quickly his gaze changed. How the light in his eyes faded to insignificance. How he could not handle my distance glances, the vacancy in my soul. I remember peering from the corner of my vision in the grocery store to see him standing, a world away, his eyes aimed at his feet as if he no longer knew where they belonged. I remember not letting myself feel sorrow for his pain; not wanting to let him into my destruction. I wanted to keep him safe from the life ending sorrow that was consuming me. I guess in the end he would have been safer with me in the eye of the storm, emotionally dead and letting our world wash away around us. They say hind sight is 20/20 and love is lost in the blink of an eye but we were lost in a string of moments all threaded together and laid out for everyone to see. Although you may not agree, I believe that icy day in the heart of the New Year was the beginning of the end.

It is not so much that that day damaged him beyond repair. It is more like that day bore in him a crack, a thin line almost unseen to the naked eye, perfectly placed along his emotional integrity. That day weakened his resolve and in the days to come, which only got worse to get better, the crack became a break, the break became a fracture and the fracture soon shattered the vase. I suppose all roads lead into each other in the end.

I remember when I was so defeated by it that I stopped eating. He tried so hard to stay strong. He told himself encouraging phrases like; ‘she will be ok’, ‘this is just the low point’, and ‘we will pull her out of this’. He told himself ‘I can do this, what kind of a man would I be if I left her now when she needs me most?’; he said whatever he had to in order to hold on; to cope with the rage that consumed him and voided my existence. He tried to get me to eat; he tried to cheer me up. He would play my favourite video games with me and massage every ache from my tried, malnourished body. He would hardly get any sleep so that he could watch my peaceful, stress-free face and trace its lines within his memory so he could recall it during the day when my expression became as vacant as a terracotta warrior.

He started writing me perfect little poems and hid them about the house so I would have something to do other than contemplate the how and why. He cleaned my apartment from top to bottom so it would be one less worry on my tense shoulders. He told me I was beautiful. He read my emotional state like a how-to book on regression and trudged forward like a solider with a wife to come home to. He put himself aside for me. That was his first mistake. I needed him; that much was obvious to anyone with half a thought in their head, but I needed him as him. Not a broken man who forgot their own needs to bring me back from my emotional death. Not part of him but all of him; whole, sound, complete; I needed him to be the one who could not be erased by the gaps between the truth and the law.

The crack only grew wider when I realised I had never mourned my calm before the storm. I had never taken the time to release the emotions left behind when love goes sour. I never purged his placid, smart green eyes from my heart; his well rounded laughter from my soul. I just gave up on me and let life happen; let it happen. I gave up and let the Ghoul take control. I never let go of my love for the calm before the storm. This insight created a panic in him, like that of a Spartan warrior lost amongst the Persian Empire. A natural fear that creeps up like daylight, but soon it is clear that it is only the sun; a fear that you can maintain, control even, once you see it for what it is; a simple, small fear that fell perfectly between the space in his memories and mine. This alone could not have broken us, were it not for the crack of January and the break of my emotional death. This too would have been something felt and then passed over like the rush of adrenaline at the top of a roller coaster. It would have increased his heart beat, made his palms sweat and his stomach jump, it would have filled him with anxiety for a few days and then been silly once reflected upon. But the past, once over and done with, lingers in the future like a pendulum of doom.

This is where he fractured. In the moment of thinking he might lose me to the echoes of a man I no longer knew; in the moment when it became clear that my death was not just it but also the need for someone else in my soul. He became number three; less than three is bearable, a heart upon these keys, but three is a heart broken. Three was to far down the list for him to handle; and so the break became a fracture. He was weakened to the point where the tiniest moment of doubt would destroy him.

He needed a way to cope. He needed to take control of his feelings again and so he placed a back door in her. He would not be the man left for a past lover; he would leave first if he must, but he would not be left. Not after he was the rock on which I stood; after he bleed for me in the darkest war of my history. He would have someone to value and love him; be it me or her. He would not come out alone from this.

By the time things got past the worse and onto the better, by the time I came back to life, the damage had been done. You most likely think the trouble started here; that this was the beginning of the end. But one cannot shatter without first being weakened. So even though you may feel this moment is what brought about our destruction, I know better, it was me. He laid the final blow but I pulled no punches; I beat us senseless for months before hand. He did the best he could out of the chaos I created. He through the punch that knocked our love unconscious but I was the one who put our love in the ring.

Like I said, that day in January was the beginning of the end, when the Ghoul got away with it. You could say the trouble started that day; you could say it finished when he theoretically fucked her. But if you ask me, all the troubles started when the Ghoul raped me, before he even existed in my world, and it finished when he healed me from the Ghoul’s wounds. Everything else was just an assortment of moments caught in the wake of life’s laughter in my soul.