Finding love was never in my agenda. Losing love was absolutely never in my agenda.
You were hard enough. Watching your slow fade as the illness ate you alive from the inside out was death in itself. To be 20 and watch my first love wretch in pain, vomiting the contents of your stomach while you slowly disappeared from this world broke me. To be new and freshly 21, jaded before my first legal drink with comrades as I watched some old man and his sons lower my future wife into the ground and toss dirt on top of your casket as if you meant nothing to no one destroyed me. With mud caked on my converse standing with my knuckles interlocked with your mother, black dresses flooding the cemetery, rewriting our cliché tragedy.
These things have an artistic touch to them—a cynical, lackluster allure like paint thrown onto a canvas with our strife scribbled across the fabric. Painting the mist covered blades below my feet with the quivering liquids in my stomach, my future mother-in-law was reminded of the bad habits that I had made-- the bad habits that had made me eating away at who I was that day—a lone character in a story written from a computer desk on a dark night, single light illuminating the immediate necessity to be told. Whispering my fatal goodbyes with trembling fingertips and shuttering breaths, I offered one last goodnight.
The irony of all of this was when I uttered the words “I will never love again” with my head draped over your head. Yours was stone, cold and hard, dew droplets blending with the tears that fell from my eyes, the two dancing together gracefully as I clung to your stone, clawing at the dirt at my knees begging for your return. Mine was pounding with the reminder of the cadence that was found at the bottom of the bottle, the trigger pulled and releasing the storms to overturn the seas in my gut. At 22, I believed the truths from my lips. At 22, I lived for you still, breathing only because you begged it of me in one of your final breaths, holding loosely to my hand while I urged you to eat, the contents of your stomach turning over and fighting a war against the apple sauce and crackers which had become an extension of my own being.
It happened suddenly, like a car crash on repeat—day after day. It happened slowly, like a burning wound, searing deep into my flesh, taking each layer and melting it away, leaving scars and damage in its wake. It happened every minute of every day but it was like it never happened at all. I would wake up every day and roll over, expecting you to be beside me, your light breathing on the back of my neck or the smell of your coffee filling the apartment with hazelnut and spice. I always expected to return to find you curled up on the couch, knees tucked tight under your body, you mind enthralled in whatever wonderland was carved into the pages in front of you. I expected to continue to find your hair ties thrown across the carpet, or drown in the scent of your skin, a cinnamon spice cutting into my sinuses.
But soon it faded and I forgot my promises.
By 23, there were no more thoughts of breaths on my neck and I was finally able to walk into a café without thinking of you. I no longer walked into the darkness of our… of my living room expecting to be met with Great Expectations of The Count of Monte Cristo. The silence became comforting and the darkness became home. I was finally able to walk through the apartment without missing the feeling of the metal under my toes and I finally found it in my to throw away the empty bottle in the shower.
After a while, it was like you finally, actually, died.
But Costia, you never left.
You’re always still here, lingering in the depths of my mind, a small reminder of almost 5 years of love. You’re the sound of a coffee grinder in the shop just below my bedroom. You’re the smell of the inside of my car when it rains, sheltering me from the outside while wrapping me in warmth. You’re the feeling of the bedsheets, the satin holding tight to my body as I drift slowly into sleep, leaving this world behind. You’re the taste of my favorite meal, shared every Wednesday with the friends who refused to let me sink.
But Costia, it’s time that you let me go.
You see, my secret is fatally gorgeous... I would have died for you, but the universe never allowed me that privilege. You said that you were Bonnie and I was Clyde, but the truth is that we never stole anything that wasn’t rightfully ours.
But now it’s time that you give it away.
Clarke is good.
Clarke is good for me.
And I don’t know if I’m trying to convince you of this or if I’m trying to convince myself.
So I’ll leave it with these words.
I’m screaming at the top of my lungs.
Let it go.
Let me go.