The Torment of Unrequited Love

Sleep and I have always had a vitriolic relationship, we never seem to agree. Those words ring true the last few nights as I tossed and turned in bed as I tried to depart reality with the purpose of escaping persistent thoughts. As I do every night, I direct my attention on ‘her’ the only woman who could ever temper the restlessness inside me. Alone in bed, under the cover of darkness, I hear her voice echo throughout the halls of my mind, her provocative words ‘I love you’ bounce around my head, intoxicating me, and when it eventually lands on my lips, it tantalizes the senses like sweet red wine. Upon closing my eyes, I can still see her flawless smile as she looks upon me with great adoration, the kind of adoration as if nothing else matters nor exists, her focus unbreakable even if the space around us was on fire. I can feel the warm touch of her breath on my chest as she lays next to me, with her arms wrapped tight around my body as if she were a koala bear joyously wrapped around a eucalyptus tree. I enjoy the thought of never needing a blanket because I could always warm myself upon the heat emanating from the inferno she secretly keeps locked away in her heart, i’ve always known this girl was fire. To my delight, I can feel her hands glide across the sensuous parts of my body with the grace of a musician, her fingers catering to my corporeal sensation as she played me like a stringed instrument. She would look at me with those splendid eyes and without whispering a word, tell me that I am her world and for me, home would always be where her heart resided. Finding sleep came easy when I draped her love about me like a velvet blanket.

 The rude nature of the morning sun has a way of hitting me hard with the cruel nature of reality. The aforesaid memories plus the million and one unsung that would take a life time to spell out, all dripped with sweet reminiscence filled my head like a million and one butterflies that lifted me a flutter through life..

..but beautiful memories tend to crash and burn when they collide with stupidity. Those very same memories have become my bittersweet agony, as I struggle with the loss of my serendipity.

Even the most indomitable structures in the world can succumb to a single obscure fracture. I naively believed our love was invincible for we were inseparable and if we were separated by reasons outside of our control, we longed for one another as lovers do. My world was simply perfect..

…until I told a lie.

Lies are like small fractures, suffer one and even the greatest love can be torn asunder. There are no such things as pretty little lies, quiet lies, white ones nor soft ones, any kind of lie has the strength of ten thousand men with the sole intent of destroying something beautiful. I have always been my own worst enemy, to the point where my stupidity is legendary but even I surprised myself this time. I’ve lost many battles that life has thrown at me but this is the first time I’ve suffered a major loss to self-defeat. I’ve learned the hard way that stupidity and Karma work in tandem and their timing is synchronously perfect. Had stupidity been an entity capable of malicious intent, I foolishly let it possess me and to the glee of stupidity, I shotgunned my relationship into a bloody mess while Karma collected it’s toll for my life time of debauchery, laughing as it pointed it’s accusing finger at me. You could’ve seen the arterial spray like a geyser from a mile away as our love took a death knell.

Have you ever seen a goddess cry? The flow of tears turn into a stream of anger which quickly give way to a tidal wave of rage. She is not the kind of woman to be cheapened with words of poor quality. Her once loving eyes adorned with passion, turned into sharp knives placated with hate. Those once caressing soft hands she used to play me like a musician turned into hands of cold stone balled into fists of anger. Her once flawless smile turned expressionless, reminiscent of a tree whose leafs were robbed by winter. She struck at me with those stone cold hands in a tempest of anger and frustration, slashed at me with her eyes and eviscerated me with words laced with poison which all hurt and warranted but the single thing that brought me to heel was the silence that followed as she looked at me with inexpressive  disappointment. I could feel her anguish as she struggled to comprehend my betrayal, it wasn’t difficult to see that the world we built for ourselves was collapsing around her and the pain I inflicted cut her deep into her soul, I’ve pushed her to a point of no return.

She was an angel flying high and I was the demon that clipped her wings.

I can only imagine how stupid my facial expression was as I stood against the tide of truth. I attempted to explain, I tried to beg and I fervently pleaded but my words were stonewalled and eventually fell on deaf ears racked with anger. After the first lie was told, my words that were once as strong as oak became as worthless as all currency south of the equator. My words no longer held sway with her and I was killing her softly until I finally relenquished my asinine truth. I’ve shattered her delicate heart many times while trying to carry it with clumsy hands and she has always managed to put it back together, for the sake of keeping us together but this time I plunged a dagger into both of our hearts and inadvertently twisted the blade so the wound cant close, severing the tie that binds.

I was her world and I repaid her devotion by putting my fist through it like a sewing needle through a balloon.

You cant build a future on a foundation made of quick sand and you cant build a successful relationship without trust. But somehow, I managed to torpedo one and set afire the other. Hearing the door close behind her was one of the worst sounds I ever heard.

The indomitable structure that was our love began crashing down upon me.

I couldn’t breath. I felt like the world around me is suffocating me with a plastic bag over my head. I couldnt eat, for everything I tried to ingest tasted like ash and dying ember, making it hard to keep food down. Somewhere in-between I lost the strength in my voice. And at some point, I had difficulty seeing clearly, the world around me became dark and frigid when she took the light she brought to my life and with her the heat from the inferno locked away in her heart. All that combined with the thought of her hurting because me, hating me, regretting me, terrified me.

The days that passed hadn’t been kind.
 My mind has always been chaotic and like sleep, it seems to always work against me. As much as I try to shut down my mind, it insists on replaying the events that transpired like a poorly written horror film over and over and over again feeding into my regret that has grown to obese proportions. If that wasn’t enough, my inner monologue tortures me by refusing to hold it’s sharp tongue. Nagging ‘what if’ and ‘why’ questions abound, yet the one question that stings the most was ‘why did you step outside the boundaries of integrity?’ to which I have no answer.

Her absence in my life has left a void that has since been filled with self-loathing and emotional toxicity. I prayed to all the gods that would listen, the supreme beings of idolization weighed me, measured me and each of them had found me lacking. Turns out gods don’t barter with the wicked. I tried to sell my soul to the devil just for another chance to be with her but the devil refused telling me he cant trade for something that’s worthless. So I spend my time with a mistress named distraction and all the vices she has to offer. But I’ve come to find there isn’t enough cigarettes in the world to exhale my regret and the only solace I find at the bottom of every bottle is ephemeral. As I wallow in my pool of despair, i’ve found a strange sense of peace by allowing my thoughts to flirt with the idea of crashing my car into the strongest wall I could find in what would’ve been an attempt to replace one pain with another but oddly enough, I couldn’t stand the thought of someone cleaning after me. So I shamble along life chasing the goddess who left a million and one foot prints as she fled my home in disgust.

Despite the calamity my lies have caused, one uncontestable truth stands tall. I loved her with everything that I am and everything I wish I should’ve been. Had I the ability to pull apart my chest cavity she’d see that I hang a portrait of only her on the mantle of my heart. If I blew a hole in my head and the butterflies came flowing out, the world would be that much more beautiful having more of her in it. I had the perfect woman, that one in ten millionth chance of a find and her love for me was limitless, the world could fall in love with her even if that was the only thing it knew about her..
But now she’s gone.

And all that’s left is misery to keep me company, a ghostly silhouette where she used to lay that only I can see all the while I obsess over what was and what could have been as I am tormented by unrequited love.

P.S. If you are reading this, learn from this and never lie to the one you love unless you want to keep me company.