In the harsh bathroom light, I look at my reflection. My face shows signs of aging, fatigue and a sad state of mind. I’m done with getting up, and my head automatically fills itself with negative thoughts. The endless uncertainty and fear of your intimacy escapades that my brain automatically translates to infidelity. I don’t want people touching you and wanting things from you. I don’t want you wanting things from other men. The security I value hanging by a silk thread. While you run away cackling with my porcelain heart, tossing it from your left hand to your right hand. It’s like Russian roulette with my feelings – where is the bullet hiding this week? When will the bombastic final scene come?
When will the next day come that my heart again succumbs under the weight of the unbearableness of having to share you with other men? Will the bullet come out on Tuesday when I’m not there? On Friday at a housewarming when I’m not there? On Saturday at a party when I’m not there? A way of dueling to death. Each time my heart sinks into my shoes as if it’s fleeing in shame. As if it’s fleeing to the shelter to take cover from the atomic bombs falling from the sky. That eternal war in my head with myself over everything I feel for you. Like an elephant, I remember everything. The princess in the tower who keeps getting kidnapped by a dragon. Yearning for her knight in lubed-up armor to return.
For months, I’ve been trying to get used to it and give it a place in my brain. With each time you tell me, it’ll surely get easier, right? But what if this is just something I’m trying to convince myself of because I so desperately want it to work? What if I don’t get used to it and my fears keep giving me sleepless nights until I succumb to them? What if I simply can’t do this and the only solution is breaking up? It eats me up from the inside like flesh-eating bacteria. Don’t you see what this is doing to me?
Without you. The two words give me a lump in my throat and make my hands tremble with nervousness. Poisoned by a love that was not granted to me. The ship rams itself suicidally against the quay. The bow shatters and breaks through with catastrophic impact. The sound of splintered wood heralds the breaking of my heart. My tears began to flow like blood from a hit artery. As I climbed out of the wreck, spectators looked at me in shock. Apparently they didn’t see this coming. We seemed to melt together so perfectly. If only they knew what kind of battles I fought to have to succumb to this. To have to show myself in this state. Post-traumatic stress syndrome from the battlefield in my head. I give up.
My knees buckle under the weight of a world without you. Without my man. My beloved. My support and my future. Everything collapses like a house of cards with a deep sigh. Salt gathers in the corners of my eyes and my body longs for the coast. My heart sets my legs in motion and lets me return to the beach like a zombie searching for brains. The wind slaps against my ears and the rough waves drown my train of thought. I stand here alone, as I once began without you. But I don’t want to wander around alone anymore. Being alone just doesn’t feel right and empowering anymore.
If I can’t live with you, what is life still worth? Isn’t giving up more painful than having to live with the pain I’m experiencing now? Don’t back down now, you’ve known the answer to this question longer than today. The infection that has spread through my entire body cramps in my chest and my heartbeat increases. My hands become clammy with sweat and I dig my nails under the skin of my palms. The setting sun begins to tremble and blur as my eyes fill with tears once more. I fall backward into the sand and my head hits a washed-up piece of ship. It’s just my luck isn’t it? A thin river of blood seeps from the back of my head down through the sand toward the sea. Making a final sweet escape.
And so they will find me in the misty morning dew. Like a washed-up merman with salt crystals in the corners of my eyes. A still life of a beautiful self-inflicted heartbreak. I was a burden, a block to stumble and trip over. An obstacle in this course of all of this madness, and now you are free of me again. I returned to where I came from, slithering all the way down deep. And I hope that I may someday still be able to share my love.
Grieve me endlessly and be inconsolable as a long-lost lover that could have been. And then find me again in that box in the attic as a cherished memory. Stroke your finger along the picture of us smiling, before I messed it all up with the single wish of it just being us two. Not us three.
Martijn Winkel 