I lay silent, my body exhausted yet my mind racing. White lightning flashed outside my window, casting shadows obscured by the objects around my bedroom. My eyes wandered aimlessly across the dancing shadows, each flash telling a unique story in my mind.
A young woman and her first love who only shared her sentiments when he deemed it convenient. An older man who'd lost his wife to his son's selfish acts. A teenage girl trapped within her thoughts, debating whether her feelings are true or she'd acted due to pressure and guilt weighing on her conscience. These visions colluded in my mind for hours. Each time they began, they related more and more. That fragile teenage girl couldn't comprehend her own emotions, she could barely distinguish anguish from glee at times. As time went on, she began to realize her feelings, however it was an unrequited love. Or so it would seem anyway, he did in fact love her, at least that is what he claimed. He declared that he was indeed in love with her, however their age gap was too great for his standards, he refused to court her, yet he admitted his feelings to her shamelessly. He'd had prior knowledge to the girls emotional scars, yet he played her like a fiddle without a second thought. Whether his emotional contradictions were intentional or otherwise was irrelevant. The poor girl was left heartbroken. He was being unreasonable, she was barely a year and a half younger than him. He claimed that because he was an adult it would be problematic for them to be together, and she understood this. But why proclaim your love and devotion if you do not plan on nurturing her heart? He'd been so sweet and sensitive, but so quickly turned so cold. The girl just could not understand. Once she'd confronted him, he declined to speak to her afterward. How could his feelings be hurt? He was the one hurting her without proper explanation. He never should have told her that his heart was in her possession, when hers was so brutishly torn from her chest. No matter how she struggled to release him from her mind, she could not prevail. Though distant their relationship had become, regardless of how he felt she attempted to become close with him once again. She truly believed that he was the love of her young life. She had convinced herself that she had never felt a love so strong, however she had with near every partner she'd had, claimed a similar notion. With each of those relationships she'd lost herself, she'd no longer feel anything romantically towards those partners but she could not bear to watch their hearts shatter, but when they were the person that ended the relationship it felt as though they'd torn straight through her, those few that she'd truly connected with, or so she thought anyway. Wishful thinking she'd supposed.
