An Open Letter to a Lost Lover.

         Let me prep this letter by saying that I am sorry. I am not trying to mitigate my fault in all this. There is a mountain of blame to be placed here and I am willing to share my own burden of it. I accept everything I am owed and take full responsibility on my part of it. But I never once believed that we wouldn’t work out. That we would not be a part of each other’s lives. I have tried everything I can to fix us, to make us work. I have asked over and over for us to have a conversation. I know you needed space and I wanted to give it to you but I needed to understand first. I just didn’t understand why you wouldn’t take the time to talk to me and let me figure this all out. I am babbling now. So since the conversation I needed was never given I guess this just a final chance to try.

         For me it started when you cheated on me with “the boy with the girls name”. Maybe cheated is too harsh a word. Simply because every time the story got told the actions were downplayed more and more. And it wasn’t even the time at the beach house, it was the time at the apartment. At first you were uncomfortable, there was touching and rubbing and drunken arms in places that shouldn’t of been. Over time the story changed, as you became more and more friends with him, as that relationship blossomed, the story and the actions became less so I didn’t know what really happened anymore.

         Your attitude towards him changed. You went from being uncomfortable around him to being best friends. Even to the point of you telling me that he was in love with you. You told me it was a declaration of love. And that day he was admitted to the hospital, and then over time even that was downplayed to a simple nod when you asked the question and it all being a coincidence.

         Maybe I am getting all this wrong, but it was this change in your attitude that became the first cut in my heart. Because when he texted, when he called, when he invited you out, your face would light up. In a way that I hadn’t seen in months. In a way that you used to look at me, but as the passion faded and the real relationship began, it felt to me that you began to look else where. To feel that which we once had again.

         I could see that passion in you. That budding love. I knew he could offer you more than me. He had the place in town, the friends and contacts, the money, the freedom that the problems my family had weren’t giving me and I watched you swoon over it all.

         So my pain began, it grew. The self-loathing and hatred grew in my heart because I felt like I was losing you to him and I my head kept telling me that he was the better man for you.

         So my heart was cut, each time I saw your face light up. And I told you that, yet nothing changed. I told you it hurt me and over time the pain grew. Each time it grew, my tongue sharpened and became tipped with acid. And as you were one of the causes of it, I lashed out at you. I was mean and evil. I was jealous and betrayed, and I took it out on you.

         At the time I didn’t realize what I was doing. Looking back I can see exactly what I did. Hindsight is very 20/20, but at the time all I could see is my pain. I was selfish and spiteful. I cried every night because of it. I was that hurt. And I just couldn’t control myself. I didn’t handle the pain I was suffering, whether it was real or imaginary, very well.

         I don’t deny that I did it, I did all of it. I was just the most evil person every. And it all came to ahead in April. At the time with both of us working and me at university we had very little time together. But they were regular. Each week was the same time. Yet because of the pain I was causing you, you started avoiding me. And I am not saying that I didn’t deserve it. But the avoidance magnified the pain I had been feeling ten fold and it all came to ahead a couple of days before my birthday. The pain had me broken. That night and what I said was unimaginable. I said and did things that night that I wish I could take back. My actions were inexcusable. I know that after that night I shouldn’t be given another chance, but I asked for one. And you said okay.

         So I tried to fix us. I was trying to put things right but you would never meet me halfway. I used any tactic I could to try and bring you to the table, so to speak. Honesty, begging, pleading, extortion, threatening, bribery. I pulled mean and nasty tricks, anything I could think of because I wanted to scare you that we may end and I thought you would fight for us. I never thought that you were manipulating the situation to lead to a breakup.

         I simply wanted us to spend the time together. To go somewhere, where we could apologize and talk and fix us. I know you needed time alone, that you needed space. I know you needed to put some distance between us so you can figure how you wanted to move forward. Or even if there was a forward. But the whole time you kept saying that you “don’t know if you wanted us to be together.” That you were “unsure”. That always gave me the impression that there was hope that maybe one day we can be together again.

         So I kept trying to talk to you. I kept texting you and keeping in contact, trying to work things out with you. I came into town and told you where I was and reaching out an olive branch hoping that you would accept. But you kept rejecting me, you looked only at the bad I did and never the good. You would hold a line I had said against me and no matter what else I said you would throw it back in my face. You would agree to meet and then not show up. Twice you left me sobbing in town pleading for you to come in and be there for me and you showed that it was beneath you to do so. Yet I never gave up, I never stopped hoping and trying.

         And that is what I never understood. You gave me hope that we may work, that is had a chance to work and yet when I tried to put the effort into getting us to work, you just kept going on about the pain you felt and it was to much to try right now. So I would try the next day and the next because I didn’t understand. I didn’t get why this all changed and what I needed to do to fix us. I told you what I needed but you just shut me out.

         But last night you told me unequivocally that there was no chance of us being back together. Ever. You told me that you have moved on and we are over. I never ever believed that we would end until last night. I cried again all night. But I have to be done with that now. The pain you cause, while I deserve, I have to find a way to live with. I have to figure out how to move on from it. You have told me there is no chance of us being better, of being together and now with this letter I know I have destroyed any chance that we could or should ever reconcile.

         So know to my questions I will never know.

            So I will leave you two alone. If we are ever together at the same function I will be friendly towards you and I offer you no ill will. A part of me still hopes that one day we can be together but that is a candle flame I need to let die out. I forgive you. For everything, and I offer a complete and sincere apology. I wish this could have been done and said in person, in private. But I haven’t been offered that curtsy so allow me now to say I am sorry. For everything I am just so beyond and extremely sorry.

            I am sorry. 

My Matchstick Girl Rewrite

When I began this story I simply just started writing. I didn't realise I was rewritting this particular story until I was about halfway through and then new where it was going to end up.

            The cold of the brick made its way through the threadbare coat wrapped around Paul's shoulders. The cloud of breath blown into his cupped hands did little to warm them. His favourite jeans were held together with duct tape and safety pins.

            A soft clink let him know another coin had been deposited into his out stretched cap. Their once shiny surface, all worn for being repeatedly passed from one person to the next, yet each still held the continued promise of survival. Another meal, another day. Maybe, enough soon, before the store closes.

            Fake lights turned the ground into an artificial day, the scurry of the normals pulsed at a continued and regular pace. Each surge brought about by impulses sent increased and decreased the flow. The city moved and thrived. Yet he sat by his wall, lodged on place, feeling their flow and movement until the deep of night finally settled in cutting the flow and giving the city a sense of still.

            Paul's gaze travelled up. The flicks of movement played across the sky's backdrop. Swirling specks of white danced across the night. Greeting, touching, dancing, playing together as they made their way from heaven to earth. Vibrating to him they seemed, to there own frequency or from the shivers shaking his body. Each unique, a life of there own, until finally descended into the slush of the sidewalk, each promise of a wonderful white world turned stale.

            The cold settled into Paul's body. He closed his eyes and pictured better days. His mum had taken the two of the to the coast for that last summer. The brilliant blue sky barely broken by any intruding clouds. The itchiness of sand and how it had simply gotten everywhere. No matter haw often he washed or brushed it still had grained itself into his skin.

            His memories brought him back to the sea itself; it's gentle tug on his skin pulling him, pushing him. He liked to just float and let the sea take him, to surrender to its forces and become one with it. It's green colour, his favourite, reflecting the warmth from the sun, shinning, shimmering, lifting his heart each morning when him mum would pack the basket full of food and bring him down to it's joyful fun.

            But the memory he clung to was the one's of her. How she would sit in the chair and watch him all day, how she smiled as he ran around the beach terrorising the seagulls and laughed at his expression when she showed him how to hear the sea in a shell. Hundreds of little things that brought the life back to her eyes. Life that had been missing from her for the past several months. He loved how her soft chestnut hair grew and she began to look less pale. That summer brought his mother back to him, if only for a brief time.

            The rough hand roused him from his sleep. Blearily he looked around, coming back to the city. The cop picked him up and put him on his feet. Paul ignored his words instead looking for his hat, his money, but it was gone. He knew that. This was not the first time it had happened. The cop shook him. He pointed to a waiting car and grabbing the jacket walked him forwards. Paul new what was coming, a station, then a group home. One more abuse after another. With a start he was out of the jacket and running. His bare chest stood out against the dirty snow.

            He tore down alleyways and through abandoned buildings. His blood racing and urging him on, finally he stopped running and hid in the stairwell of a apartment building. He imagined the families above in their warm cosy boxes, watching TV or playing games together, food generously shared and love freely given. The tears froze on his cheek.

            Paul pressed his body deep in the corner of the stairwell and pulled his knees to his chest. His face buried in there crevice. Soon he felt the shivering return and then stop, a calm centred on him as his body warmed up. He turned to stare out the opening and there stood his mother. With an outstretched hand she called to her son, He stood and ran to her, ran to the warmth and the light she offered. She held him in her arm and he knew he was loved and wanted again, knew this time they would never be separated.

           

            Officer Jenkins stared down the stairs at the body of the boy he had tried to help last night. Called when the alarm was raised by a tenant finding his body frozen and curled up. He watched as the coroner laid his body out on the stretcher and wheel him to the awaiting ambulance. He pulled the jacket the kid had left behind and covered him with it. Dignity given to the child, some respect. The crowed onlookers broke into silence upon looking at the tiny body. Jenkins walked with the body, when the lifted him up the jacket jostled and a piece of newspaper fell out. An obituary circled, Evelyn succumbing to her illness, survived by her son Paul. Wrapped in the paper a photograph. The boy sitting on the beach, an ice cream in his hand. A woman behind him, both arms wrapped around holding him as if she never wanted to let go. And now she never will Jenkins thought to himself.

Therapy

            "Are you mad at him?"

            "You're the shrink, you tell me. Should I be mad at him?"

            Dr Conner taped his pencil in the side of the tablet. It's plastic click spilled out in a rhythmic wave.

            Tick

            Tick

            Tick

            Tick

            "Fine, yes I am angry. Wouldn't you be? Again he shows he doesn't love me. " I twist in the love seat, my legs hanging over one of the arm rests, my head over the other. It's as close to laying down in the cramped off as I can come. "The whole day was planned. We had lunch reservations and this wonderful little Italian place we both like. I had tickets to the Mary Poppins’s musical, Shopping in between. Yet his sister is staying up a day longer and he wants to be with her."

            I looked over at the doc watching him write. I gave up hours ago asking what notes he made about me.

            "Was there anything special about that day?" He asked with a soft voice.

            "Not really, the date was nothing special. It was our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. We couldn't celebrate it. I was hoping today we could."

            "Did he know that?"

            I looked at the holes in the celling tiles "He didn't bother asking"

            "Yes, but did you tell him?"

            "I told him I had reservations and tickets. I didn't tell him what to. He never asked. He just wanted to be with Susan."

            "She lives overseas right? Wouldn't he want to spend as much time with her as possible before she goes back home."

            I rubbed my face, "in one day, he spent more time with her than he did with me all last month. Is it any wonder I feel worthless?"

            Dr Conner's put the tablet done on the desk behind him. Resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together in front.            

"Look at me Simon," I turn my head. His eyes peer through the glasses right at me. "Your self worth is not tied in with how he treats you. From what you have told me he is going through a lot himself right now. You need to stop judging yourself by how he see and treats you. Show him some compassion and be there for him."

            I sit up proper. Feet on the carpet. Hands on face to hide the tears. "I can’t help it. He made me believe he loved me, he told me he would be there. But where is he. Is it too much to ask for one day?"

            With a sigh he sits back in his chair, "no, it's not to much to ask for, but just because you ask doesn't mean it can happen. And when it doesn't you can't keep breaking down like this."

            "So what? Just smile and accept the rejection. It doesn't matter. Right?"

            Dr Conner's took my hands off my face. He kept them in his hands, palm up. The bandages stood out on both wrists. Blood seeping through the wrappings where the missing ring finger on my left hand had once been.

            "This is not the way to handle it. This is an extreme reaction for what happened. No one should have this much control over your emotions. No one, but you."

            I looked down at the mutilated hands. I don't remember much. Alcohol, razors, knives. I had been drunk and pretty liberal with where I put them in my body. Doctors took hours to stop all the bleeding. And now I was back here, another 5 day psych hold.

            "I don't matter, all I did just put on the outside what I felt on the inside."

            "Why didn't you leave him?"

            "We were good once, it started so good. I don't know where we went wrong. Where he lost his way with me, where I became the needy one. I wasn't like this. I used to be strong. I used to be able to handle rejection. When it was all I knew. He gave me hope. And I trusted him. I jumped all in. only, when I jumped he took the ground and now I am falling. I'm so lost and tired."

            I couldn't hide the tears now, didn't want to. The streams flowed down. It went on for a while. Dr Conner just sat there, letting me get it all out. When I calmed down, he gave me some pills to take. I stood and exited the room. The orderly that had brought me in still stood there. Waiting for me. He took me back to my empty single bedroom and sat there. Watching me. When you’re classified as High Risk for Self Abuse they don't take their eyes off you.