I couldn’t be stuck in this any longer. Things never changed, yet I kept thinking they would. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Our history proved that it was insane to keep holding on. We were destined to live the same rise and fall, over and over again.

I’ve heard that love isn’t always enough to keep two people together. I was starting to realize how true this was. Love had a way of poisoning our thoughts, and we could no longer make sense of this. Once the toxic nature of this had set in, there was no going back to the good times. We would always end up spewing venom with our words. Hating each other becomes synonymous for loving, and somehow we accepted this as our life.

The good moments started to come few and far in between, while the bad days started to seem more prevalent. I tried; I really did try to change hoping that would fix things. But falling back into old patterns came easy. I’m sorry I couldn’t find a way to resolve our problems, but it was starting to look impossible.

Love meant putting your pride aside, something we both seem to have trouble doing. There were many times we fought just because we both wanted to be right. Neither of us would give an inch, and those inches grew into miles. History created a canyon so big between us, all we could do was hope something, anything, could make it across. But every echo turned into a fight, and nothing sounded right.

I don’t even remember what the last fight was about, but I don’t think that really matters. What mattered was how I felt after it was over; like my whole life shatter in a single moment. All the hopes, dreams, and the plans we made were gone in one second.

You said it first, that maybe it was best we took a break. We both knew what a break meant; it was a nice way of saying it’s over. I remember feeling the tears well up in my eyes, and being so thankful you had the courage to say it first.  There was no way I could have.

It didn’t end because we stopped loving each other, but rather in spite of it. I thought, in time, we would have grown together, but we had just been growing apart. Staying together any longer would have been for comfort, and truly not healthy. Despite knowing this and despite agreeing to the split I still missed you in everything that I did.

The first wave of missing you hit when I was getting ready for bed that night. As I climbed beneath the covers I realized I wouldn’t wake up feeling cold, because you had tugged them all to your side. I smiled to myself, thinking “This won’t be that hard.” That night I was the coldest I had ever been.

You weren’t there to kiss goodnight. Your arms didn’t hold me as I drifted off to sleep. It was the first time in years that I was alone in my bed. Alone was something I hadn’t been since I met you.

To be continued…

November 15, 2014

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m writing just to fill the blank spaces inside myself. Are these words here to take away an emptiness I feel? What are we without them?

Our lives are shaped by the things we say, or don’t say. The silence can speak the things that got caught on your tongue.

I’ve spent most of my life manipulating words to my benefit, but I often find myself tripping over the right thing to say, and replacing it with the wrong thing.

It’s never been my intention to hurt anyone. As they say, “all is fair in love and war.” Is that why love can transform into war, in a matter of seconds? It’s crazy to think that one day I’m telling you how much I love these minuscule things about you, but the next I hate them. I hate them with so much passion it drives a wedge between us, a wedge that seemed to be growing at an increasingly fast pace.

I don’t hate you though. I could never truly hate you. The thing I hate is what we had become. I don’t want to just fill the empty spaces anymore. By the end of it, that’s all we were doing. It was an endless attempt to avoid an ending we knew was coming. It all started with the silence. When there were no more words to be said between us. Nothing that could fix this, anyways.   

When did silence become awkward between us? How is it that, a year ago, our silence was so profound we couldn’t help, but love each other more inside of it? That we could be so comfortable existing in the same space, that it didn’t need to constantly be filled with words. At some point though, the silence became the beginning of the end, or was it the yelling.

I remember looking into your eyes and thinking, this is it, this is where we end. We both knew what was about to happen. We had just fought over something that, in the long run, was meaningless. That’s all that was left of us, endless fighting.

The room grew silent; there was nothing more I could say. All I could do was wait and hope you would fill it with meaning, but you hesitated and the moment was lost forever. That was it. The answer I had been searching for. It didn’t matter to you, it never had.

Silence wasn’t always a bad thing. I accepted this from you time after time, but this was different. All I wanted from you was to fill it with something, anything. To show me that holding on wasn’t a mistake, that we could find a way to make this work. You gave me nothing, but this was typical. I don’t know what I was expecting.

To be continued…..