Edward's words fall out of his mouth like vapour but land in my guts as shrapnel. I feel my insides tear, and the blood drain from my face. I would laugh but he's deadly serious. His eyes are cold like I've never seen and his features immobile. He looks like someone about to vomit. He hands back the anniversary present I gave him just yesterday and I let it fall as soon as its weight hits my palm. There is the hard sound of metal on wood but neither of us move to pick it up. I am trying to understand the words he's telling me but I can't. He must love me, he has for so many years, and to be honest I think he's the only one that ever has. Then he turns to go, shoulders sunken and his hands in his pockets. Before I know what I'm doing I'm standing in his way and we lock eyes, the perfect distance for a kiss, but he shakes his head. I can see my pain mirrored in his dark eyes. This smacks of duty. He always said he’d finally accept my parents, however I guess they won after all.
I just stand there motionless as his tiresome figure started walking away and when the front door closed, he soon disappeared altogether. I couldn’t move or even call out for him to come back, to rethink what he just proposed for us, to convince him once more that what my parents think and do has no impact on our relationship and our lives. But I couldn’t. The only the man I’ve learnt to love is leaving and never coming back for me. Or for anyone.
As the thought of never seeing him again, never being held in his hands again or feeling his passionate kisses anymore hurt so much more than I expected. I could feel my heart shredding, tearing, cutting up into a million pieces inside my chest and I could no longer stand. I’m now on the ground with my eyes bursting out ugly tears from my weeping heart. The tears burst forth like water from a dam, spilling down my face. I feel the muscles of my chin tremble like a small child and I look toward the window, as if the light could soothe me. There is static in my head once more, the side effect of this constant fear, constant stress I live with. I hear my own sounds, like a distressed child, raw from the inside. It takes something out of me I didn't know I had left to give. That's the way it is when people are hard. It's like a theft of the spirit, an injury no other person can see.
We’ve been together for three years and they were three beautiful years that I will always treasure as long as I’m alive. I remember first meeting him, he was a messed up college kid that had scruffy hair and an uneven beard on his chin and I was 20-year-old with oversized glasses and too many books. We were complete opposites for each other but that didn’t hold us back. After we got acquainted and he offered to buy me coffee and who am I to refuse a good coffee that comes free. So, of course, I accepted and since then our relationship grew into something immersive, passionate and real. After we spent hours and hours at college studying our chosen course, we’d go to the library and study together. Sometimes I wouldn’t understand something and Edward would spend hours trying to explain it to me. It’s amazing how much patience he has.
I remember one Christmas, we both had plans to be with our family but it snowed in around the University and no one was going anywhere. We stayed in his rented house while we crowded around the fireplace with hot chocolates and warm blankets in our grasp. It was the worst best Christmas ever. We stayed up late talking and playing mindless games that would leave us in a fit of laughter. I remember that night like it was yesterday since it was my first time. Ever? Yes, let’s just say my parent’s are insanely strict. And as they always say in movies, books and other romantic entertainments, the first time, the first kiss, the first love is somethings you’ll never forget throughout your life.
But as I sink deeper and deeper into the past of Edward and I, my tears become an avalanche and my head start to throb from the amount of crying I’ve done. I’m now curled up into a small ball on the cold floor in the foyer still crying my heart out like a wailing baby waiting for their mama to save them from a monster who’s out to get them. My eyes are now too cloudy from all the tears and cheeks are far too puffy and everything is starting to hurt. The pain is like everything inside me is ripping and tearing and I don’t know what to do other then cry.
Edward and I had a plan in which consisted of both of us together. We would finish college and then book a trip around Europe that we’ll both enjoy while drinking red wine, touring ancient palaces where past royalty ruled and singing our hearts out when in Vienna. We had everything planned to the proposal, the wedding day, our first home, and our children. We even had the name picked out; M.J. But now I have to get a new plan without Edward in it. But where do I start? What do I do now? I’m lost.
“I’M LOST!”
“Mariana, are you there?” I hear a husky voice ask from around the corner followed by light footsteps on the hardwood floor. I don’t bother to look up as I already know who it is. It’s my dad, Michael and from the second Edward and I started dating, he detested the man and was counting down the days until I break up with him. “Oh My God! Honey, are you okay?” He anxiously asks as he presses a hand to my back and gently rubs in circulating motions. “Is it your asthma playing up again?”
I shake my head but there wasn’t any use to come of it. My head was completely covered by my folded arms and I really don’t want him to see my face at this particular state its in.
“Do you need your ventilate?”
“No,” I whimpered softly trying to keep the crying voice inside me to a minimal.
I can tell he definitely didn’t hear me and ushered me further on with questions about my asthma. Whether I’m having breathing difficulties? Am I losing control of my breathing and heart rate? Have I experience any other breathing troubles today? But I just answered with a soft whimper that barely sounded audible, “No,”
“I’ll get your mother, she’ll know what to do,” He finally admitted before rushing off. His footsteps fading away and suddenly returning with an extra pair of footsteps.
“Mari, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” My mother quickly asked before kneeling down beside me with a hand on my back and a hand on my head. She started to rub my head and pull my up at the same time but I didn’t want to move. I just wanted to stay there in the middle of the foyer and cry into the night. My mum used to think Edward was another ‘backstreet’ boy that only dated me for the wealth. She was helping dad countdown the days as well to my break up.
“I-I’m fine,” I admitted quietly but the words tasted like salt on my lips.
“Sweetie, sit up, please,” She asked kindly though her melodic voice.
“Is it her asthma?” Dad asked anxiously again.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” She responded tensely and impatiently.
“I said I’m fine! Just leave me alone!” I angrily yelled but it came out all muffled.
“Well honey, we can’t do that. You’re in the middle of the foyer right now and we can’t just leave you here,”
“Mari, tell us what happened? Why are acting like this?”
In that spirit of the moment, I sat upright giving my mum and dad a little fright and suddenly something new in me exploded. They both gasped when the saw my monstrous face but I didn’t bother to answer their repetitive questions on why I’ve been crying.
“Okay, you want the truth! Edward and I broke up!” I shouted out of frustration and I’m sure I saw the chandelier shake slightly. I watched them both carefully and I saw dad trying his best to fight back a smile and mum fight back a giggle caught in her throat that came out as a cough. “So there! You two can now parade around that your daughter isn’t with the ‘backstreet’ boy anymore!”
“Honey I — ,”
“No! I don’t want to hear it mum! I’m going upstairs and cry my heart out even more but I don’t intend on two to do anything about it.” I pushed past my parents and sprinted up the stairs to my room.
