This Isn't Love

        The pain in my chest was insurmountable. This wasn’t how it wasn’t supposed to end. His crumbled form curled in out itself as he cried into the arm of the couch. Sobs echo through the empty apartment. My suitcase is packed by the front door, but I can’t bear to leave him like this. Tears are prickling at my eyes. Over and over he’s asked me the same question. “What changed?” And I still don’t know the answer.

                Somewhere along the way, we had just lost everything. Maybe it was because he was always busy, or because we’d just grown apart. I honestly don’t know, but we’d stopped doing so much. His arm stopped going around me while I slept, we stopped making breakfast together on Sunday mornings when he was actually home, he started going out with the boys and returning late at night and falling asleep on the couch. Even our pointless fighting had stopped. It was like we ceased to exist to each other. Of course, he isn’t the only one to blame. I could have cuddled into him or asked him to help me with breakfast or woken him up and taken him upstairs. I’d lost the battle too. We’d just given up on us.

                With faltering steps, I make my way to the couch. When I sit down, he cringes away from my body. Even if I wanted to try this anymore, it wouldn’t work. Tonight we’re fading fast and there is simply too much to fix. “Xavier…” I whisper, voice cracked with tears I refuse to let slide down my face. One of us has to be strong. “Please look at me.”

               Xavier never gave up on us. I don’t think he ever realized that I was giving up on us. I don’t think he ever realized that I had simply stopped loving him the way I used to. “I just –” His voice is cracking with held in cries. “I need to know what changed for you.” The desperation in his voice is the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced. I never wanted to hurt him.

                “Xavier, I don’t know.” It must be the fifteenth time I’ve told him this. There is no explanation for something I don’t understand myself. “We just – we just lost it somewhere. All those things we used to do… They ceased to exist. I just think it’s time for me to leave.”

                The sob that hitches his body is so powerful I can feel it in my bones. “But I love you.” With jerky, fast movements, he grabs my hands in his. His grip is so tight I feel like my bones are grinding together, but I don’t say anything. “I don’t know what’s going to keep you here. But if I – if I could just say the things that I wanna say, I’d find a way to make you stay…”

                “Please stop.” I plead, shaking my head and finally letting the tears fall. “Xavier, this is over. We are over.”

                “Do you think this is what love is supposed to be?!” He yells, jerking his hands away from me. Fingers thread into his hair as he rises to his feet, venom in his voice and agony in his eyes. “Go ahead and rip my heart if you think that’s what love is all about!”

                “I don’t think that’s what loves about!” I scream back, rising to my feet as well. Anger and pain are never a good combination. They’re a recipe for disaster, and I can feel that harsh words coming to the surface. They escape my mouth before I can think to hold them back. “I just don’t love you anymore!”

                Both of us freeze. All the anger leaves his body, and for the first time in the five years we’ve been together I see him crumble in earnest. His knees hit the carpet with a thud and his head falls into his hands. Words aren’t supposed to have this much of an impact on a person, but I suppose these are more than just words. For so long, we have been a part of each other. In so many ways we were connected, what some would call a perfect match, and then it just stopped.

                “I know we weren’t perfect.” He whispers, not looking up at me. When his hands leave his face, they fall to the carpet, tracing shapes there like they might be the most important things he’s ever seen. “You would scream, we would fight, you would call me crazy. I would laugh, you were mad, but you’d always kiss me.”

                “Don’t you see it Xavier?” I whisper, sinking down on the couch. I don’t dare try to touch him. It will only make things worse for both of us. “Even that stopped a long time ago… For so long I was just thinking that I wanted you to want me this way, that I needed you to want me to stay. But that stopped being enough.”

               Xavier nods slightly, looking up at me. Confusion and anguish are written all over his face, but that’s not what hurts the most. It’s the defeat. The look on his face that tells me he’s lost the most important battle of his life. The void growing between us is deeper than any canyon that exists on earth. Our bodies always naturally gravitated towards each other, but now they are shoved apart like opposing magnets. There is no going back from this.

                I still love him. I will always love him in a way I will never be able to explain. I love him so much it hurts. But it’s the wrong kind of love now. This love is the kind that exists purely because you know the person too well, because you want the best for them in life. Yet, I no longer crave his touch or need to hear his voice to fall asleep at night. I stopped letting myself crave things I was no longer allowed long ago.

                “If – if you say that you don’t feel a thing…” He whispers, and I stop him instantly.

                “That’s not fair.” My chest is aching and I can feel the walls I built up breaking. I want to touch him just one last time. “I’ll always feel something for you Xavier. Always.”

                “Let’s forget the past, okay?” He begs, not moving towards me but throwing in a last effort. We both know it won’t work. Once my mind is made up it stays that way. It always has. “I swear we can make this last. Because I remember the taste of your skin, and the way you always used to look at me with those eyes, and the songs that made you cry and the way that I felt inside.”

                “Felt.” I whisper, looking up at him.

                “What?”

                “You said felt.” This is the pain he’s feeling. Realizing that the person who you love most in the world doesn’t love you anymore. But that’s not true. We both love each other. So much that it’s taken hold of my whole body and wrapped it tight in its grip. But it’s still not enough. I don’t know that it ever will be. “Neither of us feel it anymore, the spark that made us everything everyone else wanted. I just – I don’t know if this could ever work again because this isn't love.”

                “If you don’t know, then just let me go.” He’s forcing himself to sound strong, I can see it in the strain on his face and the vein in his neck. “Because I know how I feel. I know that I love you and that there will never be anyone else. And I know that you love me. But go ahead and rip my heart out if you think that’s what love is all about.”

                The reiteration of those words is like swallowing razor blades. For Xavier to think that my idea of love is destroying him… There is no worse feeling in the world. My body is heavy as I stand, shaking like a leaf as my own sobs come in earnest. “I’m so sorry Xavier.” Broken. That’s the only word I can find to describe my voice. “I wish things could have been different.”

               Xavier makes no sound as I walk to the door. Not a whisper or a sound or even a slight movement. It’s like if anything breaks the silence we will both shatter into a million pieces. My hand on my suitcase, I look back at him.  He’s turned away from me, body shaking with silent cries. I can’t bear it any longer. My hand goes to the door handle and I push myself through the door with force.

                Each step away from the apartment where we laughed and kissed and fell in love and made a life together is like walking on glass. A whirlpool of injustice and remorse if growing in the bit of my stomach, but I keep walking until I get into my car. With shaking hands, I extract the gray and black sweater of Xavier’s I always used to steal. He will wake up in the morning and realize it’s gone. He’ll realize there is not tomorrow for us. Or maybe he’ll realize that I can never really let him go.