Better than the truth...

"I can only be, want only to live in the space and freedom of my love. Together we are neither the result of surrender nor the grounds for a still more disheartening servitude. So let us wage war, wicked and blameless, against each other.”

I stumbled upon the cruelest kind of love, the kind that makes you both wicked and divine. It invaded my heart, took over my soul, made a home out of my body. The more I tried to resist it the stronger its hold on me became, everything else disappeared and all of me, my entire life retreated to the background. Once I surrendered to its power there was no chance of an escape, I learned to define myself in the spaces it occupied, relying on it for my future, my dreams populated by the promises it brought with it on the day it arrived dressed up in fate. My mind disintegrated in its wake, my sanity compromised, and still I fought for its survival, waging a war with reality.

                For a while it was perfect, all that I wanted it to be. So beautiful and sublime, nothing in this vast world was as bright, as powerful, as divine. And then its ugly head reared, monstrous and deformed, blinded by the light I failed to see the darkness, a demon smiled at me, cunning, devious, crafty and in the briefest of seconds it all changed. Masks were removed, and vulnerable in my nakedness I was suddenly covered in cuts and bruises, with nothing to help me heal but hope and memories, but they were never enough and once again I had to call upon all my strength to stay standing, to not fall apart, to resist the temptation to let my mind go. But that was not enough, nothing will ever be enough. And now the cruelest of words are on repeat in my head, he walked away unharmed and whole, and I was left with the bitter taste of endings.

Now I ask myself: “When did I become such a bitch?”. Twisting the double-edged knife in the open wounds of my heart. Solitude will do for now, until such day as he no longer means everything, until I stop regretting ever falling for his charms, and his beautiful lies. I have to believe that one day soon I will write of someone new, deserving of all my love, that the “I love yous” won’t be followed by a “but”, or a “not anymore”. Then again, today it is all tainted, my life a joke, my efforts pointless.

But there is a story that is better than the truth, and I will write it without any resentment, forgetting the darkness, and the tear-soaked pillows that had to be thrown away. But that is a task that remains to be done in the days to come, today the truth will have to do, for both of us and all of those who have witnessed the demise of this greatest love of all, a love that often felt just like heaven, where we melted into one in nights of passion and delight, where home was in each others’ arms, and I was none the wiser while he made other plans, plans devoid of me, and all too soon I was goodbye, trapped in the city of water, not my own, away from home.

Never so alone in my pain, but there are no regrets, I did all I could, I made amends,  without losing myself in the process, and there was nothing else for me to do but let it all die, because there is no more room for all this pain and him in my heart, with the unasked question in my heart: “Did you ever believe in you and me?”, but I don’t want an answer, I dread a “no” in his reply, it feels like a no. And so I make up fantasies in my mind, for now I will believe he did believe in us, that it also meant the world to him, that I was his everything for more than a night. For now, I will fool myself and tell my heart that there is a tragedy in finding your soul mate, a love doomed, the end unavoidable.

In this foreign land, empty of him, I will learn to forgive, and to walk ahead of the memories, not a backup plan anymore. I will claim back all that I lost and put it away safely in the quiet corners of this new land. Yesterday was too late to go back, and tomorrow won’t have him anymore. But today I mourn, and I remember, between the past and the future I let go, open my hands and watch it all dissipate, and all I ask  of him is to keep me in his heart for a while.

                                                                 The Truth