Superposition

Chapter VIII

Marie

Heartbreak is a funny term. It's a metaphor that implies your heart is broken, that you are broken. Except, I don't feel broken - it's much worse than that. I feel like my heart has been ripped out and stolen from me, which is a lot worse than it being broken. If something is broken, it can be repaired over time. What I feel is chronic, it can never be cured and I will have to learn how to live with it forever.

It's strange because Hugo and I are not technically broken up. We had a huge fight, yes, and I blocked his number, but we have not yet ended things officially. This fact is making things so much worse because I am mourning something that has not actually happened, I'm grieving for the inevitable. 

I know that in five days, when everybody else returns from the Christmas holidays, I will have to face the person that has been causing me such chronic agony for so long. I will have to look into the eyes that I am still so desperately in love with. I will have to hear the voice that consoled me all those times. I may even have to feel the hands that have felt every inch of me, the same hands that furnished my body with bruises.

The sad thing about all this? I still love him. I don't believe I will ever stop. I am tied to him and him to me. We are two people, fastened together, who have no way of undoing the web we have pushed each other into. Is that what love is?

To love is to be stuck? To love is to be attached? To be cemented into one and other for all eternity? If this is what love is, I do not care for love. The poetic thing would be to say that love is pain, that you do not know love without knowing pain. That may be true but I no longer want to be in such agony. I would happily never love again if it meant this dull ache in my chest would abscond.

I wonder if Hugo feels the same. Does he yearn for what we had like I do? Is he pacing around in his bedroom, trying to figure out a way to fix what he has destroyed? When he goes to sleep at night, does he dream of the happy memories we shared? Has he cried so much that his eyes are permanently red and puffy like mine? I hope so.

Lewis

'What is it you wanted to show me?' Marie is sitting next to be in the gazebo, wrapped up in my hoodie. She tucks her long hair behind her ear and shuffles up closer to me, shivering. This is the last night we have together before we return to reality, I have to make it count.

I pull a bag of weed and rolling papers out of my pocket and show Marie.

'That's it?' She laughs, 'You dragged me out of my bedroom in the dead of night and in the freezing cold so I could watch you smoke a spliff?'

I shake my head, get my grinder out and say, 'You're smoking it with me, silly.'

Marie's face twists into confusion, 'Why?'

'What, are you scared?' I tease.

'Of course I'm not!'

As I roll up, I watch Marie. She looks like she's been crying, although she always does. This is the first time I've seen her without makeup on and she looks softer, more innocent. I never realised that her hair was naturally wavy, she'd always had it straight. The pink streaks are fading but I think it looks better like that.

I can tell that she's sad, she has been for the last two weeks but she won't talk about it. I hate that she feels like she can't talk to me, even if it is about Hugo. I would always listen, no matter what she has to say. I know that we're friends now, but I can't help but feel like she's still holding back. That she still doesn't trust me.

'Ladies first.' I pass Marie the spliff and she puts it in her mouth, reluctantly. She definitely hasn't done this before. I turn to face her and lean down to light the spliff while it's still in her mouth. Our foreheads touch ever so slightly and I smile at her as she inhales. Marie coughs before taking another long drag and passing it to me.