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After Burn
After burn:
I wake at 2:22a.m. in a sweat. I reach for the only possible remedy for this ache-and realize, all too suddenly, he is gone. He. Is. Gone. The words sting as I realize what they mean: no more late night talks and no more lazy Sundays and no more falling asleep to the calming sound of two hearts beating in time. Beat. Beat. Beat. Bea…
He doesn’t miss me. I know he doesn’t. He is probably perfectly fine while I am crying my eyes as the song we first slow danced to comes on the radio, “It’s you and me, and all of the people and I don’t know why…I can’t keep my eyes off of you.” It amazes me how much life can change in the blink of an eye. In an instant, all the things you used to hate about a person, all their annoying habits, all their rambling and yelling, can be the very things you relive over and over again.
“Fine,” I lie. Because, you see, I am not fine. Not in the slightest. I am broken from being away from the one person on this Earth that knows each and every part of my being. Each fear, each memory, each hope and dream, each ache and each remedy. For that boy knows me inside out, whether I like it or not. And that is what I miss the most, I presume…being with someone that I don’t have to wear a mask for…someone who knows what to do when I am sad and how to make me laugh. His laugh was infectious. I could listen to it on repeat all day. I am obsessed with the way he is everything I’ve ever wanted. Every inch, every dark place, very sliver of light and every hidden scar; He is the epitome of the tragically beautiful.
He is running the bath and I am lying in his bed, rotting. The pain has spread like wildfire throughout my body and my patience is wearing thin. I am tired of the pain, the ever-persistent pain that has robbed my happiness. I feel the black spilling down my cheek. Damn. It seems as if when the pain has no where else to go, it pours out of my empty eyes. I am glad I don’t have to fake a smile around him. I am glad he knows what to do when I shut down. He comes back into the bedroom, picks me up, and carries me into the bathroom. He peels off my clothes and places me gently into the tub of hot water. “How can you stand that? Isn’t it way too hot?” I laugh. “Nothing hurts me anymore.” He goes into the kitchen to make a pizza. I stay in the tub, feeling a slow relief wash over me as the hot watder soothes my bones. He comes back into the bathroom. “I don’t want to leave you.” “He eats his pizza with one hand on the bathroom floor. His other hand rests in mine. A perfect fit. And with that, I feel the pain lessen a little.
I wish I could run away. A new place with a new sky and new people and new buildings is just what I need. I am trapped, though. Not in Greenville, NC. I am trapped in a place far worse: in the past. I sit down on a bench. This one hurts. The park bench. I feel the tears form in my eyes at all the things we will never get to do: kiss under a waterfall in Fiji, go white-water rafting, go on a picnic date, go on a sailing date in Venice, pick out our first apartment, hold our first child, sip sweet tea on the porch as the sun sets. This is what hurts the most. The future we never got. The one we should have got, but missed by an inch. Almost. One of the most hurtful words in the human language.. He almost came back. He almost went after her. She almost let him. She almost held on. She almost kissed him. They almost made it.
A person told one, one time, that the only way to make it out of the darkness is to find that very thing that can fill the void inside. She asked me what saved me. “Writing,” I replied. “Then write your way out.” Write your way out: four simple words that have helped me so much. Her advice was true, I found. Writing was the only way to soothe the anxiousness inside me and tackle the loneliness surrounding my fragile being. It was the only way. I am about to call him. I know I shouldn’t…but in this moment, he is the only person who will understand what I need. Perhaps because, what I really need, is him.
We sneak out of his dorm room so we don’t wake up his roommate. We go to our spot, hidden from the rest of the world. It is 3am. We lay the plaid blanket down on the damp grass and I fall into him. We just lay there, and everything is still for a while. The stars are shining and the air is crisp, holding more peace than I knew possible. I am content. I am happy. “I love you,” I say. Silence. “I will always love you,” he says back, half asleep.
I crave the comfort of the man who is not only my lover, but also my best friend. I wish I could cradle myself in his chest, where nothing can hurt me. I know I should not need him. And I can convince myself that I don’t, that I am fine by myself. But at 3am when my wounds are open and my heart is aching, tears fall down my cheeks as I realize that I do need him. I need him to hold me when I break and soothe me when I am afraid because he is the only thing that matters. He will always be the only thing that matters. That is real. We were real. We still are…and perhaps that is what hurts the most.
