Three Stories

I went into it thinking it would be good for three stories. Three stories. If I am honest I knew I would get hurt, if I am honest I thought that at least I’d get a story, or three, out of it. If I am honest I have to ask how crazy am I to think of life in terms of whether an experience will be story worthy or not. Someone said to me the other day that people couldn’t possibly tell stories all the time about their lives because they would have nothing to say and it would be boring. I didn’t tell her that life is never boring, that there is always something to say among friends and that in the hands of a good writer a walk across the room could be a great story. I didn’t say how privileged I’ve been to hear wonderful stories. I didn’t say that maybe her life is boring but not everyone’s is. I didn’t say anything. What could I say?

Three stories, that was my thought. A story for the beginning, a story for the middle and a story for the end. I knew it would end. I went into it knowing that it would end. I went in to it expecting it to end. I did not know I would fall in love. I did not know I was capable of love. That was a surprise. And so this is possibly the last story, not the third, the fifth. Maybe the last because I need to let it end, I need it to be over. And yet I want nothing more in the world for this to be one of the first stories, one of the early stories about a relationship that lasted a lifetime about a relationship that mattered. Not just a fling worth three stories. Not just a short interlude about a little sex.

It’s been four months. Four months where we don’t talk. Four months where I slam the phone in his ear. Months of listening to the voice of reason, months of listening to my friends, knowing that it will stop hurting one day. One day, when is that? Four months should be long enough shouldn’t it? Four months should be enough to forget, enough to dull the edges of the pain, to reduce the bleeding, to stop the aching, to stop missing him all day every day. I thought it would be enough. Four months since I cut him off to save myself, four months since I cut out my heart in order to cauterize the pain. But I can feel the hole aching within me. I can feel how good it should have been, how good it could have been, I can still feel his presence in everything. I know he misses me as much as I miss him.

But I know it needs to be over, that it was never going to last, logic tells me it was nothing more than a stupidity. He’s a young kid wanting to party, wanting to stay free of commitments, wanting to avoid commitment, terrified that someone else will try to control his life, while he himself spirals out of control. Logic tells me that I need to stop this before it kills me. Logic tells me that I need to let him go before he hurts me again, logic tells me that every time it hurts more, logic tells me he’s too young, too scared, he’s not ready for this. My heart tells me otherwise, my heart tells me how good it felt to be with him, my heart tells me that it’s learned how to beat listening to the sound of his breathing, my heart tells me it will love him forever no matter what he does or has done. So I take my heart and I cut into it, letting it’s secrets and knowledge bleed away.

He calls me and asks me not to hang up. He says he wants to meet me. He says he’ll come to my house at 10am. I say ok. I don’t sleep all night worried that he won’t come, I don’t sleep all night worried that he will come. At 10 he’s not there, at 10:30 he’s not there. I’m too tired to cry, too numb to scream, I try to sleep and I don’t, but I do think. And at 11:15 as I am drifting in that land between sleep and awake he comes.

On his motorbike with no muffler. On his little boy’s toy. On the same motorbike that has almost killed him many times, the one that has given him his scars, the knee, the shoulder, the lip, below the eye. God how I long to touch his scars.

He comes in and we talk. I ask him why he wants to do this. He says he wants to be with me. That he doesn’t understand it but with me he feels peace; I don’t understand it either but with him I feel peace too, until he leaves and then I just feel desolate. I tell him I can’t do it again, that I can’t stand the emptiness. He tells me it will be ok, he tells me he’ll call me.

For the next day I am happy, stupid ridiculous happy. Happy like I haven’t been in 4 months. My heart restored beating in my chest, no ghosts following me I enjoy my day. And that night I wait for his call.

He doesn’t call me.

And the next day I wait for his call.

My brain starts to scream. This is why you shut him out. This is what I was trying to protect you from. You can’t trust him, you can’t do this again, you haven’t finished bleeding yet, but you would have and now you are just picking the scab off the wounds. You don’t need a heart, you can live without it. Stop now. Stop trying to feel, stop trying to capture the happiness, it only comes with pain.

So I call him. He has nothing to say. He doesn’t talk. He claims he lost his phone.

I know better.

I know that I need to not only remove my heart but destroy it, destroy any piece of it that is left, so that it can’t cry out. I need silence, the silence that comes from a lifetime of being alone, the silence that doesn’t interrupt the loneliness with feelings of peace and love.

And now this is story five, I don’t know if it’s over, I don’t know how much more I can take if it isn’t. I still want more, I want to risk it all to get what I want. But I know in the end it will probably only be material for a story.