When you fall in love, it is an almost seamless process, slow and steady, where you wake up one day and realize ‘okay, so this person has my heart. Perfect.’ Distracted with excitement, everything picturesque. You live your days in blissful happiness. Naturally, turbulences make their appearance, but love conquers it all, does it not?
Until, of course, it doesn’t; the turbulences become frequent and weighty. And your preferences leisurely shift themselves. This epic tale transpires into nothing but a doomed affair. Always in hindsight, you locate the first crack and how instead of fixing it up with some good old cement; you let yourself be moved by empty promises, foolish, and irresponsible of you to facilitate the start of a toxic cycle.
Listens? Not to understand, only gaslight. But those nauseatingly sweet words? Doesn’t smile the same. What about the most polite partner known to humanity? Too many white lies. There is also contagious laughter? The eyes are always angry, aguishly sad. But, but the perfect alignment of our hands? Forgotten how to comfort. Those century-long conversations? Profound to superficial and dry.
Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, your options are limited. Start the conversation and give the place to your excruciating fears to prove themselves right or pretend and be the Oscar-worthy actor you were born to be. Of course, the latter. That’s what we all choose initially…
One day, while doing something mundane, something that is definitely not thought-provoking, you realize you aren’t in love with them but rather with a rendition, you had crafted in your head. You both fell for an idealized perception. Holding each other hostage in cloaks decorated with heavy emeralds and diamonds; suffocating, not giving room to be human. And this realization stings. But worry not, that is how it is for most. I have been told that the count of lovers, madly and irrevocably in love, is relatively low. You can’t keep pretending, though, the never-ending fears stifling.
Why can’t you see we are bleeding? Are you pretending too? Am I the only one who can smell this rust and taste this souring metallic? All I see and taste is red. Do you too? I am being smothered by the bleeding wounds of our love. Are you oblivious or just pretending?
Failed attempts to burn anxiety, exhaustion enveloping tired bodies, shaky hearts, both muttering the words ‘we need to talk clogged in the throat, delayed by refusal to admit the truth; all you were was another casualty of love.