Flash Fiction #2 Reminiscent Regrets

A keepsake from the past

Written by hooverssweaterpaws

Warnings: Angst, breakups, references to toxicity/violence, regret, sad stuff

I don't remember the last time we spoke. We must have been at blows, waiting for the last hammer to fall, before we were willing to pick up our broken hearts from the floor and walk away. I don't remember the last time I saw her smile, without that mocking glint in her eyes, without that inner sense of hatred that sent a chill through my spine. I don't remember the flame that ate us up, turned us into these husks, made us undead in life.

I remember the moment she turned from me, silent in the kitchen, staring out at the world, beyond the confines of the walls of our apartment. The way I tried to get her attention any way I could, reaching out for a hand to hold and finding nothing but cold fingers, trying to take her shoulder and feeling shrugged off before I ever made contact.

In those moments after the end, when all you can do is pick up the pieces and try and fit yourself back together, I felt like jumping the boat and giving up. I felt like throwing something at her, fighting the truth that things were never made to last. We always want things to work forever, when forever has never existed in the first place.

When it comes to letting things come to blows, there's always a better way. I know that, and I must have always known that. I called myself a pacifist, until the first insult was thrown across the table, until she stood up and began screaming accusations into the air between us.

The air doesn't feel as thick or heavy when it doesn't protect you from those empty shards. It doesn't feel as powerful, when you're being stabbed by the words of someone you used to love. Someone you think you have a duty to love.

And what a funny notion. Love. I used to think I had it, used to think I knew what it was. I thought that there was an easy fix, that we could just go to counselling and figure things out together. But of course, she never wanted to go. She didn't care about fixing something she didn't see as broken, something she didn't see as valuable. She saw me as a punching bag that had finally split its seam. Sometimes it's cheaper to just buy a new one, throw out the old one.

She never hit me. I want to make that very clear. And I never hit her, either.

We weren't violent, we weren't toxic people at all. Or at least we tried not to be. For a while, we were genuinely happy and healthy. But everyone reaches a point, whether that's a breaking point or just a point of no return, I don't know if they're even any different anyway. And eventually, I must have driven her to that point, though I have no idea what I did. I certainly didn't mean for everything to turn into shit.

Who would?

But it's too late now to sit back and cry over lost love. It's too late to beg for forgiveness, when I still don't know what flicked that switch in her mind, turning me from cherished companion into enemy. I still don't know if she made that choice herself, deciding that she had no energy for socialising with my kind of weirdness anymore, and just choosing to let it go.

Part of me remembers how we started, when she first came to me with the admission that she wanted to try out something between us. That first kiss, in the rain, chasing each other through a world that seemed like it would come apart around us. Tracing our steps back home as the storm ended, watching the footprints in the thick clay soil get slowly clogged up with water and debris. The only evidence of that day, lost to time even before the next day swung round.

Part of me remembers the abandoned house we hung out in as kids, smashing our way through the windows on our first visit and then tucking blankets over the sharp edges so we never got cut. We spent hours there, trying to learn how to be. Trying to figure out whatever mess we'd made that day, and trying to work out solutions if we could.

Part of me wishes things were that easy, now. But the bigger part of me knows that's selfish. Things are never easy. It doesn't matter who you are, where you go, what you believe in, how old you become. There's always difficulty. It doesn't compare. You can't sit and believe that your teen years were nothing like the problems you face now.

The emotions fade with the distance that time brings, but the pain that came then was still pain, even if we don't remember it as well. I know I cried when she was packing her bags. I know I was upset when things were over. I know I begged her to stay. But I don't remember the words I used, I don't remember the excuses she gave, and I don't know if it matters that much anymore. When the world ends, you just have to figure out if you're ending with it.

Feelings are an illusion, but that doesn't mean we don't experience them. An illusion is the cruellest kind of magic, in some ways, in that we force ourselves to believe in them ,to believe in some spell that was never real to begin with. We drag ourselves through this pretence, and we call ourselves fools for forgetting that it was something we set up for ourselves.

Humans. The only creatures who set each other up for failure, I suppose.