OK, I Feel Better Now

A work of (almost) fiction.

“You killed me, you stupid bitch.”

That’s all he could write.  Page after page scrawled with the same scorned sentiment.  As much as he tried to express himself, as much as he had articulated all the hurt and pain and sheer misunderstanding of the entire affair in his mind, his heart was guiding his hand to reveal something else.  He had entire monologues mingling inside his skull, thoughts and feelings about her that he was so intent to express but every time he looked down, those same words were slung across the page, as if his hand and heart were disconnected, as if he had broken the link between his brain and fingers.  He had written three pages of the same sentence without realizing it.  He sighed and put down his pen.  His hand was cramping.

Had she in fact killed him?  Was this some kind of subconscious revelation that was now coming to the surface or was his denial finally boiling over?  No, she hadn’t actually killed him.  Her negligence, however, played a big part in his demise.  He was drowning, suffocating, dying with each weakened breath and she saw fit to stand out of the way.  When she left, she had known he was in trouble.  She was his only lifeline in the end and when she wasn’t there to pull him out of the quicksand, he drowned in the dirt.  The world got to him and came down on him and crushed every bone.  Every mutilated muscle called out to her and she never came.  His last thoughts were of her cruel absence.

God, why had she abandoned him and for that matter, how could she have done this so carelessly, so easily?  Was he wrong about her the entire time?  Was their relationship translucent and flimsy?  What happened to the poetry critiques and five-hour phone conversations?  They had conquered so much together.  They had defeated time and distance and defeated the odds.  They were two damaged kids and no one thought they’d make it out of their teen years.  Yes, they were damaged but when they were together, they weren’t cut up or broken.  It’s not that they made each other whole or completed the other half of one another.  No, when they were together, they felt like they were allowed to be who they really were, allowed to bring out all of themselves.  They didn’t need to hide away bits of pieces of their personalities.  It was very clear that they were both nuts but they accepted each other, crazy and all.  And it worked.  And there were good times.  At least, that’s what he thought to himself.  Were all of these good times one-sided?  Was he mistaken?  Was everything he ever thought and felt about her and their times together utterly false?

As much as it hurt when she left, stopped writing, stopped calling, the one thing that got to him more than anything, the one thing that cut to the core was the question of why.  Why had she left?  She was known to skip town every once in a while to clear her head.  He was used to that.  It was a simple part of her craziness that he had accepted.  But, she was never gone for too long.  It always seemed by the time he had another breakdown, she’d be there to help him through it.  Not this time.  No, when he needed her the most, she was gone without so much as a note of explanation.  She left him alone with strangers.  She left him to fend for himself all the while knowing he wasn’t equipped to handle this world.  How could she do that to him?  After all they had been through, after all those years of friendship, she threw it away and for what? 

She e-mailed him a half-hearted apology one day.  He replied that he’d forgive her eventually.  They never talked again.  At the time, he was so angry, so confused, so upset that he didn’t even want to respond but he knew that he wouldn’t stay mad at her forever.  How could he?  So, instead of ignoring her, he sent a short response of eventual forgiveness infused with enough acid to let her know things were not okay, although they would be in the future.  Yet, over the next few months he realized how easily he could stay mad, how the very thought of her sent his brain into a frenzy.  Forgiveness was beyond comprehension.  If it were ever possible, he realized that this rift was too gaping, too wide to repair.  He could forgive but he would never forget.  He never did.  Any time anyone hurt him, he recorded it and put it in the recesses of his mind.  This didn’t mean he held grudges or was slow to forgive.  No, he had fixed problems with his relationships before but he just never fully let go.  With her, however, nothing would ever be the same.  They could never be friends again, even if he wanted to.  The worst part was she didn’t seem to want to.

He regularly read her blog and realized one of her friends had left her as she had left him.  At first, he was quick to find satisfaction in this turn of events.  He quickly squashed those feelings, though, because he realized he didn’t want her to hurt as much as she had hurt him.  She never did actually do anything to him, after all.  She was never mean and she never participated in killing him.  She just wasn’t there.  She just checked out of their relationship, threw it all away for no discernible reason.  No, he didn’t savor the fact that she was hurting.  If anything, it made his hurt grow because she was more upset over the loss of her other friend than she was at the loss of him.  And this other friend was the one who left her.  Entry after entry detailed her utter breakdown over the loss of this guy and yet she never wrote about missing him, never once mentioned an ache or a teardrop over his loss, over leaving him and then feeling guilty because he was dead because of her.  No, it seemed like she had forgotten about him completely.  He stopped reading her blog.

And yet she was still on his mind.  It seemed he was playing the role of grieving friend, grieving over her like she was grieving over this other guy.  It was completely backwards and made no sense to him.  She should have been grieving over him.  After all, it was her fault.  She left him.  She never explained herself before she took off.  She left him wondering.  She left him worried.  And yet, she was done and it seemed like she wasn’t going to hurt over him like she was going to hurt over this guy that left her.  This only inflated his emptiness.  She was, after all, his best friend.  It might not have seemed like it but after she left, he had a lot of time to think about her and he realized how in sync they were, how suitable they were for friendship.  He really cherished what they had but that realization didn’t do him any good.  She was gone and it felt like she wanted to keep it that way.  The way she could so easily give up on him, how she never called or wrote or e-mailed or reached out in any way.  One puny e-mail and that was the extent of her effort.  After all the years, laughter, crying, imagination, creativity.  After everything, there was nothing.

He had tried to write to her, to somehow create some closure for himself, to explain how he felt in the wake of her absence and his eventual demise.  But, he couldn’t.  All he could write was that same sentence over and over again and he realized something.  That sentence basically wrapped up the end of their relationship.  The end of their relationship ended him.  Without her, there was no one to help him get through.  She killed him.  She killed him and he wondered if she would ever know, if she would ever be able to grasp the pain and the anger and the confusion.  Sure, she might have been feeling that way toward the other guy, the one who left her, but she wouldn’t feel that way toward him.  She was getting hers but he felt no satisfaction because she didn’t know how badly he was getting his.  Maybe this was how karma was going to cut her.  It seemed pointless, really, considering the fact that she might not even realize why she fell into such an unfortunate circumstance.  That she was being punished.  No, he didn’t want to think of things that way.  But he did want her to know how badly he was still hurting.  He wasn’t going to tell her, though.  For some reason, it was easier to sit back and bleed.  To talk to her now would be too difficult, too much of a strain on his already fragile mind.  It would be too complicated and too much of a nuisance.  No, a letter was more suitable.  After collecting himself, he finished his letter.  He didn’t send it to her, though.  Maybe there was no point to any of this.  She obviously didn’t care how he felt because if she did, she would have checked in, made more of an effort to mend the relationship.  No, it didn’t even matter anymore.  But, he still wanted her to know.  He posted it in his blog instead of sending it to her.  That way, it was out there.  He didn’t know if she even read his words anymore but if she did, maybe she’d finally catch a glimpse of understanding.  If she didn’t, at least he got it off his chest.

She not only killed him.  She was the reason he didn't believe in relationships.  She was the reason he was hesitant to call anyone a friend.  He had built up walls because of her, walls that were too high and too thick for anyone else to ever pass through.  It was all so cliché but pain penetrates through clichés, dramatics and predictable patterns of behavior.  Doesn't everyone build a wall when hurt?  And aren't we all at our most similar when we are in pain?  Perhaps she was writing a letter, too.

Love is a construction within the heart.  It does not form a sweeping monument overnight.  Instead, it builds over time, laugh by laugh, brick by brick.  And despite the months or years it can take to form, it can shatter in seconds.  There's nothing left but wreckage, jagged memories and sharp hesitations that cut long after it all comes crashing down.  And even when the debris has been cleared away, there's still the spot where this beautiful construction was located, the place where hope and happiness dwelled.  There is a vacancy.  And as much as he hoped writing the letter would clear that debris, he knew the pain would still linger.  There was still a vacancy.  And he was too tired to rebuild.

That stupid bitch.