How to Love Claire Mason

Falling

After he ran from me that day I began falling slowly out of love with him. I realized that yes, I still, despite everything, had been in love with him. Or at least the person I thought he was. The boy who laughed and smiled at everyone he knew and even those he didn't. The boy who made friends faster than the male European exchange students get girlfriends. And let me tell you, the girls swarm like flies to those boys.

The boy who could charm anyone into thinking he was a dream come true long enough to have them trapped when he became a nightmare. I was falling out of love with that boy, remembering how dark of a nightmare he truly was. I realized that if he were a mixture of heaven and hell, hell was overstepping the boundary and burning holes in all that was heavenly. The boy who yelled and accused and ridiculed and then ran away from me was not worth loving. I finally was beginning to see that.

I was falling out of love with the idea that one day, he'd come back to me. Though he still held me in my dreams, I was beginning to not want him back. In dreams he'd be standing there, with open arms, an easy smile on his angelic face, out of his depression and free of his suicidal thoughts. Perfect, like my first impression of him. But I no longer wanted to be enveloped in those arms. I could picture myself turning away, without looking back, and leaving him behind. For good. And nothing would hurt. Because nothing hurt more than feeling empty without him.

Never mind that he'd never want me back anyway. Never mind that my face never appear in his dreamland. I don't need him. He said he cared, he showed he did, by sending me to counseling but how much attention did he even pay me? Enough to see that I was getting thinner and thinner and smiled less and less? Anyone could have seen that. But he chose to act. Did he feel remorse? Maybe. He ran when I merely mentioned "that time". Maybe if he'd own up to it, I could forgive him. Perhaps he doesn't deserve forgiveness. Perhaps I'll never know how it all really made him feel. And maybe I don't care to know. Maybe his secret, about being eight years old in his uncle's friend's house, in a dark, dark room, and how he was touched, maybe somehow that justified his actions. Maybe he only needed to control someone, take advantage of them, the way that man did to him. Maybe he is just a part of a cycle. Perhaps a priest touched the man and the man touched him and then he touched me and couldn't stop. I am the end of the cycle.

I don't yearn for the kick of his child inside me anymore. I don't want any ties to him. And thank God I don't have any. I don't even wish for him to be arrested, even if it were possible to get enough evidence. I just want peace. In my mind, and in my body. And when I look in the mirror, I don't want a war to start. In my reflection, I want to see more than a body that was used and looked at. I want to see a girl who someday, could love and be loved, a girl who could feel that even with nothing in her pockets or no lover by her side, she is enough. Without him lingering in my mind, I can be enough.

I'm falling, falling, out of love with him, and slowly, on a Tuesday morning after pretending to eat breakfast, I fall completely, down, down, down. Onto the concrete outside my front door.