love letters.
She find the letter tucked inside the back pocket of her
You are him, she thinks with a smile and newly lit embers of hopeful happiness in her heart, unfolds the letter.
You’re bleeding all over me.
Don’t you see?
Can’t you see?
I’m only letting you cry on my shoulder
So that I can be close to you
So that we can touch and I can feel like I belong in the same pocket of air you inhabit.
And all you can do is bleed your broken heart all over me.
Stuck in your own cocoon of misery you don’t even realize why he left you.
Why he couldn’t take it anymore, why even though you’re gorgeous and kind and smart and articulate and charming and oh gosh, everything any man could ever wish for, he still dumped you on your ass and went looking for someone who leaks a little less.
Who isn’t so demanding on the other person’s sanity.
My god woman, open your fucking liquid black eyes for a second and look at me.
Look at me and feel what I feel for you. I’m not your friend, hell no, I’m not just some cushion you can wrap your arms around and weep on and hope that I will soak it all up and be all dried out and puffed up again for some more misery.
You don’t make love to a fucking cushion for god’s sake. But you just decide when I am what and use me as such and its okay because you are the one doing it. But when someone you think you cared about does it to you, you don’t even know when to stop crying.
You’re not being just. Not to me not to yourself, not even to your own memories .How can you ever hope to learn anything from something when you can’t even look past the futility of it all.
Don’t you realize, his sweet nothings murmured in your ears when you lay exhausted in his arms weren’t meaningless… they were meant to make you smile, to make you blush and snuggle up to him. To make you feel happy, and loved. And it did. But nothing is supposed to last forever. No spell, no promise. Hell even religion doesn’t last forever. The promise of god himself is valid only as long as it satiates within us what it was meant to satiate and then we surrender it to pages of history and start looking for new benedictions. And six months after the fact you still don’t feel like understanding the place of one relationship in your life?
What the hell is wrong with you woman. I mean what vital mechanism did god forget to stick in your brain, that now you can’t even see love when it stares you in the face?
You can’t tell that when you wanted to fuck to forget, or maybe somehow, appease your own sense of being wronged by doing wrong, I was making love. Trying to make you realize that happiness isn’t vested in one person and one person alone, that you can move on and find a new beginning and its okay, because that’s what we are fucking supposed to do. Shit happens. Life’s a bitch. Everybody hurts… but most of us understand that it’s a part of life, not life itself. And you have the temerity, the gall to expect everything to be different for you? You say why me… Why me? You think no one before has had their heart broken? You think you all alone are subjected to the pain of being rejected… Just look back at what you’re doing to me, look back and you will see that the tears you weep are blistering my soul.
He finds the letter in the mail. Duelly stamped and addressed. Her flowery hand writing spelling out his name on the envelope. There’s sweat on his brow and trepidation in his heart. He’s finally, finally mustered enough courage to let her know how he feels. And now its her turn to apologize and tell him that she finally sees what he wants her to see. That she love him too. That together they can make it work, that he’s done his part and she will do hers. And together they can find love.
“I wish I had never met him, I wish you were there before him, I wish… I wish, I had never known him.’
Words that had finally cut too deep.
I’m here now. I’m here now and forever, if only you would let me.
Hands trembling from fantastic expectations, he slowly slides his finger under the cover. Gulps once, and unfolds the letter:
Blistering your soul, you say. You say, I’m using you. Or at least implied as much.
Well yes, I am. Using you. As my anchor, my support, my guardian angel, my knight in shining armor. As someone who can be there for me, when everyone else has stopped meaning anything. I found comfort with you, I found peace. I found the love you claim I didn’t see, and I wanted you to know exactly when and what I feel about a person who by the virtue of history is going to be a part of my life forever. Because I didn’t want to cheat you, no. I didn’t want to be like the everyone else you seem to be so inspired by. I didn’t want to lie to the new man in my life about the old one. I didn’t want to have to pretend with you, or lie, or deceive or make you believe in something that doesn’t exist in my heart just because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I think you are wrong, and everyone else is wrong. And sure you can call it temerity… or gall even insolence, stupidity, insanity…whatever. But I think you are all wrong to believe that it is okay to cheat one man in order to forget another. That it’s okay to bury your true self deep inside somewhere and pretend that it never existed and secretly laugh at someone’s love while hurting from another’s memory.
I knew you were making love… and so was I. I wasn’t healing myself; I wasn’t trying to get even… I was letting myself feel loved again. Feel wanted, desired, admired by someone I still manage to care about even when my heart is still reeling. I thought, now here’s the man I should have been in love with in the first place. Here is the man who deserved to claim my initiation into womanhood. Here’s the man I know I deserved all along. And now, he’s the man who’s broken my heart all over again. And this time it hurts more. So much more… because I thought you knew. I thought you understood. You know he cheated on me, and that’s why I’m angry… and you chose to tap into your fears instead of my feelings and condemned me for something that I could never even conceive of. I never, ever wanted you to feel inferior to him, never even dared compare you two, because from the second you took me in your arms and let my tears dry on your perfectly ironed suit, I knew that he would never have done that. No he would’ve suggested that I was being a whiny bitch and I should fuck my worries away. But you held me close. You held me together… and in that moment, more than anything else, I knew that you loved me. That this is what love does to a person, it makes them cry the other’s tears because I saw you wiping your eyes. You taught me what I never knew about love…I couldn’t have imagined that you were crying because I was being a whiny bitch… I really thought you were crying because I had been betrayed, because it hurt you to see me hurting, because you gave a damn.
Look, it’s pointless to go back and forth trying to justify our point of views. You have said what you felt, and I am not going to hold it against you, because that is what I wanted for us to have, a relationship where there was no room for pretense. I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t think about him, when I did because I didn’t want you to be kept in the dark. And now you have returned the favor, and it hurt like hell to know how you really see me, now… but I appreciate it. I understand.
I wish you did too, but you don’t and it’s not fair on my part to expect you to be someone you can’t be, since I’m obviously not being the person you expect me to be. The fact that I love you and you love me is quite obvious. But doesn’t count for much. I’ll always be honest about my feelings and you will always be wishing that I could just suck it up and pretend to be happy because that is what we are supposed to do. But I can’t do that, not with you… another man perhaps. Someone I reconciled myself to, but not someone I love. No, please don’t apologize… please don’t pretend to understand. I can take the scars of honesty, but the balm of lies… no, don’t call me. Don’t write; don’t ask for forgiveness, for a second chance. Don’t try to win me over. Don’t try to make amends… I can’t be someone else for you… and can’t expect you to be someone else for me. You are who you are, we chose wrong. And this is making amends, we can choose again and go our separate ways and harbor the flames in our hearts. And you can pretend that I never existed that this never happened, and I can bleed my heart all over someone else and maybe he can let me bleed enough to reach the core of my emotions that will forever belong to him. Just like this part of me will forever belong to you.
Shit happens, life’s a bitch… everybody hurts, everybody else….we can stop hurting each other now.
I love you
In this moment, yours forever.
He calls her. But there’s no answer.
Comments
but confusing.
and i think u need to chk the gender roles u've written. I mean how can: she feel his lips on HIS forehead? was it his lips on her forehead???
how was it confusing?
its a gift i tell you. despite everything he rightfully felt he was still the one who ended up calling.
By hook or by crook "she" wins hands down over and over again.
im sure its pretty obvious who my sympathies lie with.
and for the record, there was nothing confusing abt this.
great work.
or i don't know..? not sure.
nice post
Theres no winning an argument against a woman. especially one you care about No matter how hurtful you get, she wil ALWAYS, manage to inflict greater pain . So its better just to keep it shut and abide. But alas egos get in the way... and the whole thing falls to pieces. but yur right... the women always win. Guilt trips are thier domain you see, we guys just can't even come close to laying one on well enough. And then girl freinds just go from logic to sheer absurd contemplation and the water works start and before you know it, its sheer bedlam and then the guy's apologizing and saying honey i'm sorry i didn;t mena it weven though what she said hurt so much more but she's walking away cause she knows she can move on and you don't get a third chance and just like that its over and we don't even know what the hell happened. Sit in a daze trying to figure out what we said that was any worse than what she said and we finally realize that it wasn't what was said, but that our time, simply was up. Some other shmuck is going to be in our shoes now and all in all its really a tremendous relief to be free. But we never quite forget, the hurt or the love, and so eternally are bound to the memories of a person that is solely responsible for the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain we'll ever know.
Goldfish:You're not sure, and you're also wrong. You stick in a relationship long enough and all kinds of guts start popping up. And there in lies your undoiong, cuz more often than not, maybe even only sub conciously but the woman in yoru life is basically just waiting for you to give her reason enough yo walk out of your life. Not necessarily for someone better or hotter, but simply because they don't like being told they are wrong. Buddy they hav justofication for every damn thing they do. They can twist your romantic gestures into hatefull attacks and thier hateful attacks into romantic gesture and at teh end you just don't know night form day anymore. Lay is right, its a gift. Maybe just compensation for being amde the more fragile off teh two sexes they govern with guilt trips and cunning. You doubt me? Just try to reason with a woman on her periods. Or a woman you love, period.
Theres no greater truth than this:
women, can't live with em, definately can't live without em.
Anyhoo, nice piece. Kina mushy though.
now then, isnt that a harsh generalization? I admit women hold the power to mess with minds but hello men dont always have a halo on their heads either.
you know what all of this is about?
games.
its ure bad luck if you end up with a gameplayer, and mind you not all women ( or men for that matter) are game players.
if you end up with a gameplayer time n time again break up after breakup its only coz you choose em, coz ure attracted to them- this goes for both sexes.
so i admit its women MOST of the time who play the games but they arent as monstrous as you make them sound. its an inbuilt defense mechanism and partially pride.
if they "twist your romantic gestures into hatefull attacks and thier hateful attacks into romantic gesture" its just because they are afraid.
"she's walking away cause she knows she can move on and you don't get a third chance"
she KNOWS she can move on? are u kidding me? trust me, its not a walk in the garden-
but again a lot of things here are relative.
as my literature teacher always quoted " to generalise is to be an idiot, to particularise... that alone is the distinction of merit"
again lots remaining to be said but so little time- please do me the favour of making sense of my random thoughts yet again-
somehow whenever i come to comment on your blog i seem to write my thoughts as they come to me. that was meant to be a compliment which i feel i should make clear for now as i re read it im not sure it sounded entirley flattering. :)
Feel free, always to let your thoughts flow as they may here, or anywhere actually, the fact that someone doesn't understand you doens't mean that you dont make sense, but rather that they don't want to undersatand what they don't believe.
As always, thankyou for taking the time out to write.
Though I have to say points made by both sides were valid. I wouldn't be partial to either gender. He was right from his position and I can see the girl being equally correct from her stand. Most of lifes stories are like this. There tend to be no rights and wrongs, just uncontrollable situations, circumstances.
Here's to giving empathy a second chance!!
Sonia