“I just...can’t see straight, I feel like my lungs are collapsing and like the world is spinning and then like I’m going to pass out. My entire body shuts down,” I whispered into the open air of the office I was currently sitting in. It was like my subconscious thought if I whispered the fact it would make it less true. I finally decided to take an affirmative action with my disorder. I had long given up on therapists and medication, even before I met the greatest antidote to all my troubles. I hoped she would be proud of me. She always said she didn’t mind my compulsions, that she thought they made me who I was and she was madly in love with who I was, but they were ultimately what caused me to lose the only light in my life.
“I can’t see this going any further,” she finally spoke without looking me in the eyes. Even though her words just gouged my heart out and I felt like I was drowning in my own despair, I still desperately wanted to see the piercing look her uneven doe eyes would give.
“Then why would you tell me you loved me with all your heart until the end of time? Why would you promise to never give up on me, on us? Why did you whisper into my ears how much I meant to you when we fell asleep after making love in our bed? Why, why would you let me get stuck up on you?” I breathed out. I tugged on my hair as if pulling on something would release the anger built up inside of me. Even in this moment, my mind was still telling me to repeat my last question because it didn’t feel right slipping off my tongue.
“There is a difference between loving someone and being with someone,” she finally responded. She didn’t even think about her words. The crease that would cut into her face when she flips through the dictionary of her mind was no where to be seen. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m so sorry. I love you, I love you, I love you,” she whispered as she reached up to cup my face. her small hands still lit a fire within the pit of my stomach when they touched me. In this moment, my disorder seemed like a distant past.
“No, no, no,” I repeated, tears welling up in my eyes. Anger rivaled misery in my heart as I finally looked into the eyes that calmed all my ticks and healed my broken mind.
“Please, don’t,” she recoiled her hands from my face and her eyes turned away. Within that exact moment all I began to think about again was I needed to organize the books she had shrewn out on our couch from the beginning of the fight.
“This what a mistake,” was all she said as she put her bag with her remaining belongings to go stay at her mother’s place and walked out the door.
As if the world was taunting me, that’s when I got the text. The one from an old mutual friend of ours that, within a few simple words, caused my entire soul to come crashing down.
‘So...is there a reason your girlfriend is out with another guy right now?’ I read in the therapists office.
‘Where are you?’ I couldn’t think straight. My mind was a swirl of compulsive thoughts, anger, heartbreak, and most of all confusion. Why would she move on so quickly? It’d been a week. We were more than just some teenage couple, we were adults in a serious relationship that went beyond normal boundaries. She was the remedy to a disease that haunted my entire life. Her face melted any malous and ice I had in my heart directed towards a world and a personal past that I blamed for fucking me up.
I’m fucked up. I’m fucked up. I’m fucked up. I continuously whispered internally. But she loved me anyway.
That was the first time I admitted to myself that her love was now in the past.
Finally, I escaped the office and made my way to the place he told me he spotted her.
I felt an odd sense of relief as a drove. Throughout the past day my mind was slowly becoming silenced and this moment was no exception. I needed to get better for her. If it was disorder keeping us apart, I will spend every last second trying to rid myself of my obsessions.
Before I knew what was happening, my car was jerked to the side of the road in a moment of mindless heartbreak. My entire face was drenched in tears and I felt like the breathes I was sucking in weren’t relieving the tension building up in my chest.
She can move on but I can’t. I can’t just get past this. I have a disorder that gets me caught on things and although I’ve spent my whole life trying to run from it, being with her made me embrace it. She loved everything about me and I began to love myself. Underneath all my self loathing, I found something worth loving in her. I was always caught up on perfection, order, cleanliness, but she was the first imperfect thing I found beauty in. I didn’t mind that her lips were slightly uneven, her eyes weren’t aligned and were a tad bit too big for her face, her hair was damaged from years of products, her nose wasn’t a straight line, but she was beautiful. She radiated an aura that pulled me from my self imposed darkness. My world of selfmade perfection was torn apart by her, but I couldn’t move on.
I couldn’t just let her go.
He wouldn’t care that she picked up a coffee mug that it was a fragile as a baby’s hand. He wouldn’t care that she liked to drive around at 3 in the morning just for the fun of it. He wouldn’t care if their goodbye kiss was perfect. He wouldn’t be someone who only saw imperfection everywhere except for her.
When I obsess over things, I see them through. If this were a few weeks ago, I would drive to this restaurant right now and ask her why. My disorder caused me to sometimes forget social normalities, like you don’t run in on someone’s date in tears asking them how they can rip what was left of your heart out of your chest from miles away. But I’m changing. For her.
I find myself driving down the road towards our home. Fix yourself was the only thought on my mind, other than the image of another man being everything I couldn’t be across a table from her.
Doors unlocked. Lights on.
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I'm not as happy with how this part was written, but I'm already working on the next one which will be pretty intense.
Comment/vote for the next part, there are only a couple more left!
