1000 more goodbyes

You’ve just left. After the most emotional night.

You just texted me saying “I’m breaking”. I am breaking too. Shattering into a million tiny pieces.

My heart hurts.

This evening, just before the rain came thundering down, you hugged me from behind as we looked out across the city. We could see the high-rise of the apartment complex you’re staying in. I asked which way your window faced. You said the other way. And we both sobbed.

I wish I could’ve just stayed there forever in your arms. Suspended in time. Just the two of us, Just how it should be. Just how it should always be.

But you had to leave. I’d made you tea. You said you’d leave after you finished your tea. Then the rains started. You said you’d go when the rains stopped.

I said I didn’t want you to finish your tea and I didn’t want the rains to ever stop.

But they did. And you left.
After another emotional goodbye. Where you told me it wasn’t my fault. Where you told me not to blame myself. Where you told me you’d always be proud of me. Where you said you’d be there for me if things got really bad and I wanted to hurt myself. Because you still love me. And you still care for me.

We kissed. Which we shouldn’t have. But I pressed my body into yours and I felt the earth fall away beneath me. No floor. No apartment. No Thailand.
Just us. Joined. One team. One unit. Together.

It physically hurt me to stop kissing you. To stop holding you. And to let you go.

We’ll see each other again. Probably, unfortunately, in work tomorrow. But it won’t be the same.

I hope we have another night like tonight. Even though it hurts. Another night where we bare all and cry into each other’s shoulders.

Where we say all the things we should’ve spent years saying.

I’ll part with you 1000 times more if it means 1000 more nights like this with you.

I am heartbroken.

dancing

We’re dancing on the edge of a precipice
Except you have both your feet
Planted firmly on solid ground
And I keep pirouetting closer to the edge.
Light-footed
And fragile
A swift breeze would do it
One loose rock under foot
It would be quick.

But there you are
Still.
Both my hands in yours
And your feet
My anchors.

There are daisies growing in the cracks of this landslide.

splendid suspension

This piece of writing just came out of me quite angrily (there’s a theme occurring here). I’m not sure it makes much sense, but it helped to get it out of my head. So I guess it does makes sense, in a way. TW: self harm

I feel rotten inside.
I am over it but I am not.
I’m holding myself together but it’s an illusion.

There is a black mould growing around my heart and my lungs.
There is barbed wire inside my skull.
And bare electricity lines running through the veins in my hands and arms.

I feel I have no control.
In a desperate bid to distract myself from the gnawing, twisting feeling inside
my hands reach for anything.
Anything hard.
Anything sharp. Frantic.
Anything quickly.

To anaesthetise my head.
To focus on a pain more tangible.

Is it even a pain?
Or is it a chronic sickness?
Something that you learn to live with
like the ringing in your ears after a loud firework
or a landmine.

That’s what it feels like.
It feels like I stepped on a landmine.
I blew into a thousand pieces.
And then, miraculously, before 5am, I had stitched myself back together again.
I did such a good job, nobody could even see the scars
where I had been torn, limb from limb
heart pulverised like ripe fruit
skull shattered.
Nobody suspected a thing.

Maybe I was just so glad I didn’t die from the explosion, that I failed to notice the warning signs.
My stitches were pulling apart at the seams.
Bits of shrapnel I’d not noticed.
One in my shoulder, so I’d walk hunched and stooped.
One in my eye, so I’d never quite trust my own judgement again.
One in the back of my head, so that I always felt as though you were lingering right behind me.

Another in my heart. That one I leave there. I don’t try to dislodge it. Nor do I let anyone else close enough to try.

I feel like second-hand goods.
Used, broken, less valuable.
~~Dirty.~~ Unclean.

But I can feel my seams splitting now.
And this darkness oozing out.
Covering my clothes and hair with thick black tar.

Everyone can see.
They give me a wide berth.
Don’t want to get any of it on them.

I’m trying to stitch it back up, I really am, but I’m running out of thread and I’ve been sewn up so many times before that there isn’t any material left without a puncture wound already.

My hands are slipping and I can’t even see my needle and thread through tear-filled eyes. I tried.
Like a mouse on a wheel, I am not making any progress any more. I’m tired.

I’m just holding the fabric now.
The fabric of what was,
what could have been,
and what never should have been.

Sewing was futile. I can feel myself, covered in that viscous, black tar.
Tarnished.

Landmines only explode when you take your foot off them. I wish I would’ve paused.
Splendid suspension. For just a fraction of a second more.

a birthday card i’ll never send

(context: it was my ex’s birthday yesterday, and i still can’t forget the date, as much as I’d like to. This is the birthday card I’ll never send him. Writing it last night was beautifully cathartic, even if it still made me shake with rage.)

HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY
(I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL ♥)

Oh, there’s no need to be so rude, is there?
People know, you know?
Maybe you thought I’d told everyone immediately, but I had a lot of therapy to get through first.
(Just let me know how best you’d like to pay. I’d take PayPal.)

No, but people know now.

I only told two people at first.
No, three.
No, actually, four.
But people talk. And a rumour like that isn’t going to stay a secret.
Guess it’s not a rumour though is it?

I mean, I had to give a reason for having you removed from that group chat so quickly.
And yes, I could have lied but
I have no interest in protecting you anymore.
I don’t give a fuck about your reputation.
You deserve what you get.

I hope it plagues you everyday.
I hope you lose sleep over it.
I hope you’re terrified of bumping into our old college friends.
I hope you’re wracked with guilt.
I hope it’s a secret that’s destroying you from the inside out. The way it did me.

I hope your new girlfriend finds out.

Raise a glass to the birthday boy!
And many
many
happy
returns.

waiting

i wait.
because i’ve waited so many times before
stupidly
blindly
for a text, for you to come through the front door

you’re not like them, i know
but 8 years of being treated otherwise
obsolete
is hard to unlearn
harder to let go

years of
nights without texts
still,
mornings without texts
all the next day without texts
i guess i should’ve known this was a precursor
to my calling you “ex”

foolishly waiting like a puppy at the door
your absence
an abscess
i couldn’t ignore

i guess that’s because you’d lost all my trust
and i was right
these inklings
these nagging sensations in my gut
because two years ago i found out what i already knew
and i was just painting over rust

regardless of who it is
i still feel the same
i can’t sleep til they’re home
i won’t switch off that part of my brain
because i’ve lost this before
my sanity
and
this game.

how do you mend a trust universally broken?
i can’t say it out loud
“fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself”

best left unspoken.

c • r • e • a • t • i • v • i • t • y

I listened to an episode of The Guilty Feminist about creativity. Our lord and saviour Deborah got the audience to participate in an exercise of creativity. They simple had to make a sound and see what word came out of their mouth. Not planning the word, just trusting that the right thing (that being anything) would come out. So I did it myself. In alphabetical order, and I wrote it down.

apparently it’s difficult to come by
but maybe the problem is him, not you
could it be that maybe…
doesn’t matter anyway…
even if i tried to explain myself…
for fuck’s sake
get on with it
how about we start over again?

i never pictured any of this happening
just try and put yourself in my shoes
kids
let me get it out of my system, please
much of what i feel always comes back to that night
never a day when it doesn’t come to mind
oh, if i could go back and shake myself
perhaps things would have been different
questions like this always circle around my mind
radiating out from me
shall we go back to it?

text message. teens.
underpinning, undermining, undervaluing
visceral hatred and shivering skin
what happens now?

x‘s at the end of our messages still
you’ve won.

things i can’t say out loud

there was a box of my things,
that i completely forgot i was missing.

some thing didn’t make sense; a set of children’s animal pens.
some things did. my garmin watch.
and a bag of gold glitter.

you’d kept it all. neatly in a box. and as soon as i challenged you, called you out in the middle of the street, you just ran away and left it there.
like you didn’t even want it in the first place.

i can understand you keeping the useful things.
but why did you have to keep my sparkle for yourself too?

midnight phonecall in the distant future

he’s crying. it’s a number i don’t recognise because he’s changed phones and ignored me for so long.

i recognise his voice though, as soon as he starts talking through his sobs. he’s not exactly saying sorry. he’s mostly begging for forgiveness.

because after 14 years, it’s dawned on him. what he did. he’s wracked with guilt and he’s paranoid. he wants me to promise not to say anything.

he wants me to tell him he’s a good person.

i sigh. because i really. don’t. have the patience for it.

i got over it several years ago.
and i hang up.
without saying a word.

ashamed

i am ashamed
that i cared so much about someone

who cared so little.

i am ashamed that i put my entire self-worth in his hands
and that i was naive enough to be shocked when

he broke it.

shattered it into tiny little pieces and then stepped back as if to say

what did you do that for?
look what you’ve done now.
clean it up then.

i thought i desperately needed his confirmation
but what i really needed

was my own.

i owed him
absolutely
nothing

and somehow, i still ended up with a debt to pay