Sarah Paulson - ONE SHOT

cruelty free.

Trigger Warning (mental illness)
783 words

Life wasn't always this cruel. Until it was.

Until I came crumbling down and i was never quick enough to put all the pieces back together before the foundations cracked again. This is not a love story, more a confession of guilt for the words I said too early or too late or never said at all. For the fact that was my body was a transaction rather than a gift of love. For the therapists who've complimented me on my emotional intelligence whilst it tore me apart. For the depression that was always too depressed. And last but not least, the meds I left on the bedside table every morning.

She left me, or maybe she listened when I asked her to. For her sake. For my pride or the pride I wish I had. I knew she wanted to stay, to hear me utter the slightest sound of mortality in a relationship where my only role was to be immortal, strong, resilient. I'd learnt how to hold my own hand loosely whilst gripping others intensely a long time ago and she knew that, she knew that my life was never really experienced but simply lived, however she was loved, beyond my fragile immortality was raging passion and warmth to heat her soul but the fuel was always struggling to stay lit. And she loved, fiercely, unconditionally. Until one day she learnt that I loved her so much that I was unable to love any other, including myself. I wish i'd begged her to stay but instead she walked away. The scent of her freshly washed hair or discarded clothes under the bed stayed nonetheless . I started drinking coffee how she liked it and wearing the clothes she used to pick out for me. I'd imagined her passing me in the street and making love in open places waiting for someone to see. I wished to listen to her broken moans as I went down on her and loved her body like I always said I did.

I woke up early this morning, i slept better than usual. Not refreshed but i'm much less exhausted than the day before, i dragged my restless body out of bed and into the bathroom, brushing my teeth for the first time in a few days i stared directly into the hollow figured that faced me in the mirror.

After she left i started attending therapy, so maybe if i met her again she'd have known i tried, tried to love myself in all the magical ways she loved me, i never quite got there, taking one step forward just to be pushed back three. She would've been proud, i knew that much but not proud enough to accept my fragile bones collapsing in her arms, because i wasn't doing it for myself, but her. It was never going to work, my heart would never mend if i built it in the image of it being loved by another. So i stopped it all, therapy, meds, the bullshit conspiracy of mindfulness. I stopped counting to ten, rushed quick into my anger and screamed desperate pleas into a desolate night sky each evening begging for my body to love me as much as i wanted to love it. I shouted broken love songs in every silent moment, and burnt my pathetic body to the god damn ground and everything that stood surrounding it. I hit rock bottom - at some point i started hitting rock bottom twice a week, and climbed to cloud nine every Saturday night with drugs and meaningless sex with women i should've known the name of. I longed to moan her name or cry into the smooth skin of her neck, i longed to ask her the help she always wanted me to ask for. I longed to tell her that i wanted to love myself as much as she loved me, that i wanted to wake up and no matter how the day went i'd be ready to start another, i wanted to tell her how i'd learnt to sleep alone, or how she made hugging safe and kissing much more than a casual interaction, she made loving safe and vulnerability strong. I wished to kiss her cold fingertips on a dark walk home, i wished to go to work and make something of myself so she could simply watch. I wanted to tell her that she made eye contact easy and tell her that i could be apart if the road i then took always lead to her, how silence wasn't awkward but just a lack of noise.

Life wouldn't always be this cruel.

author note :
Hi guys, this is my first time publishing some written work so i'd appreciate if you were gentle with me, however i'd really fucking appreciate some inspiration or ideas you'd like to be bought to life.