Bedroom Breakup

Cassidy Colgan

You don’t know how much more of this you can take.  You can see the dark endless scripture that fall outs of his mouth and dances around your room, tattooing your pink walls.  You recognize this text as dainty lies that have been sugar coated with false sympathy, lines you have already been fed a thousand times. You’re not sure if you want to cry, throw up, laugh, or simply turn and walk away.  You calculate which reaction would shock him most and you figure walking away would do the trick.  You could just leave him there, surrounded by all of your things, a prisoner to the room that once held so many good times, now mocking and decrying him as the fraud that he is.  You’re not sure if you want to surrender your space; instead you want to remove this imposter, and let yourself believe that the smiling faces within the pictures on the wall are still grinning.  You want to lock the door and settle inside your bubble, stop him from poisoning the atmosphere in which you thrive.  You can feel the cheeriness of your room fade, the bursting rose petals that are printed on your sheets have already begun to wilt. 

You realize that the persistent army of his explanations and reasoning are still coming, and you’re unable to block them out.  The parade of words won’t stop infiltrating your eardrums; you can already feel the stifling suffocation of a room crowded by excessive rhetoric.  You close your eyes and concentrate on breathing, letting the sweet lavender that accents the air into your nose to dull your senses.  When you look up you suddenly realize that he’s waiting for your response.  How can you respond if you don’t know what he’s saying?  His eyes are pleading, soft around the edges; the spark of intensity that once intrigued you is beaten down and dreary.  You wish you knew what you were thinking but you can’t concentrate on anything other then the familiar edges of your favorite teddy bear, perched in position on your mountain of pillows.  The silence is unbearable, all those lost words fill every square foot of your room but the silence creates a dense pressure that threatens to shatter if one millisecond more goes by without uttering a word.  You would be subject to a pelting of angry verbs, pleading adjectives, and cheating nouns, surely the explosion could crush every molecule of your being. 

You attempt to halt the attack and clumsily mumble and stumble through the process of trying to string together a legitimate sentence but when the words fail you, you simply shrug your shoulders.  What else could you do?  What’s done is done and you are now faced with a choice.  You know that you can either believe his moronic lies and forgive, or you can move on.  Neither seems too appealing and you’re shocked to realize how little you actually care.  You expected fireworks of anger and torrents of tears, fiery threats and finally the bliss of forgiveness, of agreeing to put the past behind you and move forward together, yet you feel nothing. 

Is that your answer?  

Do you want it to be?   

Do you even care? 

You suspect he’s sensing your trepidation and like any other idiotic male he begins to feel threatened, as his upper lip curls into a sneer.  You’re aware that the weight of your future is crippling your mind yet apparently your brain’s only offense is numbness.  You know what you have to do.  The answer has been fighting inside of you, the logics of your intellect feuding with the emotions of your heart.  You know it’s over.  You tell him you are certain so.  With a belittling shrug you open your mouth and tell him that you don’t care, that you no longer love him, and ask him if he would please leave.  You stress the please, hoping that politeness will disguise the abrupt rudeness of your comments.  He glowers, the previously dull eyes now flicker with such an intense hatred that it stabs all of his pleas for forgiveness and reveals him as the sinister predator you knew he was.  You’re not sure if what you feel is shock or disgust, but you figure that it’s no longer your problem.  He tries to hand you a swift and final blow, verbal abuse at its cruelest, but all of those words must have deafened you because you only hear white noise. A sincere wave of serenity has just been carried in with the breeze, drifting through your window and ridding you of him. 

Of course, this is all very surprising to you.  You never could have guessed your capability at making the decision.  Over the course of two years this scene had been played out in every different scenario.  Each dispute was followed by a carbon copied subsequent feud; the recurrent inevitably of it all triggered a lingering vile revulsion in your taste buds.  He was a dormant and incurable disease and the symptoms were obvious.  He starts by blowing you off, avoiding you in the hallways, ignoring your calls, the first sniffles of the mounting cold.  The illness would progress, just as the throat begins to soar, he begins to soar on your presence, replacing the avoidance with cruelty and snide remarks.  As bickering begins to erupt, truths are revealed, tears are shed, promises are broken and you have developed a full fledged flu that requires several days of pleading and apologetic bed rest before forgiveness is granted and you are restored to a healthy state.  He was the germs you wanted so badly to expunge from your infected body, yet blowing your nose of him did no good, it only left you chapped, dry, and reaching for more tissues. 

You know, however, that you can’t blame him, that it is you who allowed this repetitive war to ensue.  You know that you never stopped the vicious cycle because you needed him.  You relied on him for more than the role of a boyfriend, but for the consistency that he provided.  Like any well fought battle there were numerous casualties on your heart and you anticipated the surrender of all the pain, the fresh promises that were drawn up, the kiss that sealed the peace treaty.  The days that followed the arguments were always blissful; a tender appreciation for each other replaced the verbal combat creating a desire to be as close as possible, to hold onto what you had almost lost.  You also know that by buying into this cycle you buy into all the lies.  You see yourself trying to grab onto the intangible, trying to capture an elusive heart.  You know he doesn’t love you, you doubt that he ever did, you know that you’re a pawn to his pleasure, a demoralized piece for him to use as he pleases.  You are compliantly addicted to him; he is your drug of choice, a chemical that you rely on for the façade of happiness that is your life.  However, just like every drug user who wishes to stay alive, there comes a time when you must put down the powder and quit.  Cold turkey. 

As you look around the painfully familiar surroundings you realize that they’re not as similar anymore.  A shift has taken place.  He’s gone now and with him went the barrage of angry confusion.  You’re by yourself for the first time, and the feeling of your room reflects that.  The calmness that you usually run from has become therapeutic.  Your eyes are suddenly weighed down, lazily blinking out the blackness that crowds your vision.  The past events have been exhausting and you allow yourself to sink into the folds of your bed, giving in to the seduction of a peaceful, mind numbing slumber, confident that when you wake up you will be a new person. 

Your eyes flicker open to see a stark and opaque night shrouding your window.  There is a moment of blissful oblivion as the cobwebs of sleep begin to disintegrate and your brain recalls the pre-hibernation events.  Unabashed terror grips your body, miserably you remember that you are without your significant other, and a deep sadness threatens your pounding heart.  When the tears begin to seep you realize that your comforter is attempting to suffocate you and you throw the wretched cover off of your trembling, sweat drenched body.  You lay there miserably as your muffled sobs penetrate the chilled silence of a pitch black night.  This was not the wake up you had expected.  While you were sleeping all of your brazen confidence and delicate reassurance had been robbed from you, leaving you with only grief vibrating through your bones.  You should have expected this.  How foolish you were to think that you could handle this, to slide by gracefully without a moment of regret and woe.  Where was all that painfully easy apathy that had poisoned your final words, leaving you terribly alone?  Bitter rage and disgust curdled the pathetic sadness that you had just a second ago allowed yourself to wallow in.  You realize what you have become, an exposed, shivering body, weeping for a reason you can’t even justify to yourself.  You must stop this cycle.  Salvation comes in the form of rhythmic inhalations, crisp air filling your weak lungs, pushing out the deadened, negative stale chemicals.  Your heart slows its frantic sprint and synchronizes itself with the pure oxygen that sustains it.  You allow yourself to surrender to the basic functions of your own human being.  Inhale, your heart beats, your blood flows, exhale, your stomach churns, your mind clears.  Your body pulses in this constant activity, these simple life giving processes.  You become vaguely aware that drowsiness begins to fog your head, yet this time you don’t give in.  You just lay there; you have no sense of time, no feeling of place, no battling emotions, and no problems.  You just lay there, feeling the life exist inside of you, letting go, giving up, breathing in and out.