Category: Short Stories

my final remark

michelleLeave a comment

“I am so sorry for your loss.”

“Thinking about u x”

“Let me know if you ever want to talk” 

I am cared for. I appreciate it. 

However, this feeling is hard to describe. It’s hard to feel. 

I talk to you. I talk to you often. You are the only person I want to talk to.

But today I didn’t talk to you. My mind uncemented itself for the first time since I heard. Since you left us. I existed without you, and it wasn’t horrible. I survived.

And then I thought about you. I remembered, and I broke. For the first time, I felt it. Realizing this was the moment when I really spoke to you. I was ready to say my last remarks. 

I now know what heartbreak feels like.

I felt a crack. I literally heard it as it worked its way down my heart. I now walk with my chest throbbing, two broken pieces on my left side.

I never regretted where we left off. It didn’t mean anything to me. I watched you from a distance, I saw you fall in love, and I saw you graduate and travel. I congratulated you when you got your first job. We kept tabs on each other. You checked in, too. That is why I never doubted; I knew you knew it, too. There was still love. There would always be love. 

So I’m not broken because we hadn’t spoken in a while. Not because I hadn’t seen you. 

I struggled through memories and emotions, none of them quite fit. I remembered moments and in some instances, I was stuck in space, literally. I could not move because I’d think of something else that you would miss, laughing at jokes we shared.

An avalanche of feelings and then it hit me, and then broke me. That moment I realized that we would never get to meet again. 

I would never bump into you at the grocery store. We would never see each other at an airport somewhere somehow. There would be no more coincidences between us. Our physical story ended here, and for as long as it will take for us to meet somehow in the afterlife coffee shop,

This is heartbreak. I have never been so sad. 

This is why I always got excited when you posted something new.

It’s the reason I immediately became friends with someone who knew you, too. I was getting little previews. Things that you would finally tell me when I saw you again. I knew our story wasn’t over. I loved where we left it off. I was so excited to see you again one day so you could finally pick up where you left off.

You would tell me what happened and I would tell you what happened, too. 

And we would tell each other how we truly felt. And we would laugh at each other, and then scold each other for accepting that. But eventually, we will have caught up and maybe exchanged numbers, and maybe we would see each other, no date forcing our hands. 

But I sit here with harsh reality, and I’m cold.

And my heart is in pieces. 

You are not here anymore. You are not experiencing life anymore. You did what was needed and what enough for you. Your journey in this part was through.

I remain. Trying to make sense in a word so senseless. Forcing and then taking one step at a time. 

And it’s heavy. I didn’t expect this load, this weight. But I carry it for you. And I feel despair for you.

I feel despair for myself and things I have always wanted to tell you, songs I wanted to show you, and moments I wanted to know more about. My curiosity remains. My love remains.

And I am going to miss you. So so much.

I’m going to think about you, and I will laugh at the good parts and smile at the moments when we helped each other and held each other. And for the little girls that we were.

And I’ll cry a lot not to make you feel bad. But to let you know that you were loved. 

And I will love you forever.

And one last thing, before I go

michelleLeave a comment

Today marked one year. One year since Mark had packed up nothing and finally walked out of Sylvie’s life. She sat at the same booth in the same cafe where, a year ago, she watched as Mark tried to care and tried to explain why, even though he said he was not ready for a relationship, he now was, and it was not with her. 

She sat on the same side of the booth but ordered a different drink. Recently, she realized that she quite liked lattes; not only that, she actually hated green tea. She didn’t know why she drank it for almost 3 years. 

Everything in the cafe was the same. The barista was the same. Only Sylvie now had a blonde pixie cut. It suited her. She also dressed differently now. A lot was the same, and a lot was also different. The most significant thing was that she was sitting here alone. A year ago, you would never have caught Sylvie alone. She hated it. Over the past year, however, she has grown a fondness for solitude. It was great she had time to think about herself and what she wanted. 

Anyways.

In front of Sylvie was a blank piece of paper. After a morning well spent crying and remembering, she devised a brilliant idea to put pen to paper. Fortunately for her, she no longer had Mark’s number. She had nothing of Mark at all, just the memories. She wondered how she could get rid of those too.

The plan was to write a letter. It would be an unsent letter because, as we know, she did not know where Mark was. But the letter would be her final remarks and well wishes as she celebrated the anniversary of her rebirth and emancipation. There were still a few things she needed to get off her chest.

And so she wrote: 

Maybe I am not supposed to understand 

Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense to me. How you can treat someone one way, and they treat you another. 

For so long, this reality was difficult to accept. We are raised according to universal standards, at least that is what they say. “This is what is right. And this is what is wrong,” they said knowing this is gonna take you far. 

However, it didn’t take me anywhere with you. 

I have always been a rule follower. Rules make sense to me, I am often too lazy to go against them. You are not lazy at all. I guess there might be something good in that. At least there is something good. 

I still think about you, about us, and what we never were.

For so long, I replayed it over and over. Like seasons I moved from blaming myself to blaming you, to hating you. It was active, and I found myself suspended in my memories, still picking apart moments. Only this time, I wasn’t picking myself apart too. I would feel waves of sadness as I now understood how little you cared. How careless you were with me, with my heart. It breaks me to remember how little I knew, how beautifully I opened myself up to you, how I welcomed you to my place, my safe space. I now see the strength behind my vulnerability: the cowardliness behind your walls. It never made sense how I could approach you with such care, and you showed me the opposite 

Time has been proven to be nothing but a social construct. And while there was little time between us, I created a lot of space for you. And I kept the space for you despite the fact that you never made space for me. It never made sense to me. I now realize that it never will.

I can’t comprehend how you can treat someone the way you treated me because I would never treat someone like that. This is simple, but I needed to realize one thing before I came to this conclusion.

You did this to me. 

I did not hurt myself. I did not set myself up to be misled and lied to. I never gave you permission. Your actions were your own, and so is the responsibility. 

I prosecuted myself for the treatment you inflicted. I put myself at the stake when really I was the victim. What I needed was protection. What I needed was to be so far away from you.

Not redemption. 

How greedy must one be to allow a hungry man to give you food when you know you just ate? How selfish, how unkind.

Your actions provide an overview of your character. There is nothing more to investigate, nothing to discover. The proof is in the way that others feel once you have left a room, and I felt horrible. We operate on different playing fields; I am here, and you are somewhere. Our paths were never meant to cross. You stayed because you had never seen the sun so bright, I stayed because I thought I would see stars in that kind of darkness 

Our exchange was not even. But I have since returned what was never mine, a desire for acceptance that I have never needed. 

I can run now, that burden is off my chest. I can breathe even deeper than I have ever done. 

We are not the same, and we will never make sense to each other. What a blessing that is, what a blessing.

Sylvie

“Excuse me, ma’am, would you like another latte?”

“Oh no, thank you, I’ll take the bill”

Sylvie never returned to that cafe; she found one down the street that she liked more, and they had freshly baked croissants, too.

a monologue about anger

michelleLeave a comment

The white lights and stainless steel cabinets made the kitchen feel like a police officer’s interrogation room—and honestly, so did the energy.

The cluttered kitchen felt empty, and tension hung like blackout curtains, completely taking over the room. We sat across from each other, nothing but the space of the table between us. The table that I thought had been chosen in agreement easily and happily—a once happy memory ruined by the new unknown context I just found out tonight, three years later.

On the table lay the remnants of what could only be described as a train wreck of a five-year anniversary dinner.

Like the spilled wine on the table, a lot of angry and rage-filled words had been spilled tonight. 

It was at this moment it clicked. It all made sense. I looked at the man across from me, the man I claimed to love. I studied his face, I looked at his skin, his hands, his eyebrows and then big one, the one my eyes had been avoiding. The tears. Tears flowed down his cheeks, and I watched in awe.  Staring at him I realized -this was the first time i am seeing him cry. In confusion, temporarily interrupting my anger, I realized I didn’t recognize him. Or rather, I didn’t recognize him like— this.

This is the part that had been missing, the part that I wondered about, the place where he sometimes disappeared to

5 years worth of frustration and suppression 

5 years of wondering, of asking, and revisiting 

Finally, I could see him 

All of him, I had arrived.

He was looking back at me. 

His breath was only a little faster than mine. His was sharp and frequent like he just took a brisk walk. He looked a little smaller, vulnerable. His shoulders slightly hunched over – his final attempt to conceal something, anything as he sat here heaving after completing the most open, gut-wrenching and anger filled outburst.

After he finally bore his soul.

I can tell he has been holding this in.

5 years of saying it’s fine.

5 years of saying that it doesn’t bother him 

That he didn’t mind,

5 years of pretending to be okay when he wasn’t.

I want to laugh because look at us! Becoming the very same people we used to mock. The people we said we could never become

It’s been 5 minutes since he spoke. We have sat here for 5 minutes 

He has been recovering, and I have been thinking.

It’s quiet, so I can hear every teardrop 

This man is angry, and he has finally told me. I can finally see him 

I feel relief, but I am angry, too.

Our eyes are locked, and we study each other, searching, investigating, waiting.

It’s my turn to speak 

To share my piece

To bring forth my 5 years of context

My response 

I take a deep breath each molecule preparing me for the response that may change everything. 

The response that defines 5 years, our 5 years …

“Are you done? 

Can I speak now? 

No, I genuinely mean it, are you finished. I want you to get it, get this off your chest. Finally 

I want you to say it all! even if you scream it all!

Because this is the closest, the most I have known about you, the most anything that I have felt from you in months!

This is real. This is honest. This is you 

You are angry. You are still you but right now you are you and you are angry! and that is okay. 

`I take a deep breath’

I stay begging; you call it nagging. But we sit here every few months, upset at each other; We kinda sorta figure it out, and I say what’s kind of on my chest, and you don’t 

We “solve” the issue – and then we move on. Except we don’t, and you don’t get heard, and I never know, and then we go right. back. to. it. 

But finally. We are here. 

It’s not great, it’s not comfortable, it’s definitely not fun but shit we are here. 

I am here, and finally finally, so are you. 

You are angry

The thing is, I can finally say it. I can pinpoint it. It’s identifiable. T h i s h a s m a d e y o u a n g r y. Before, I just had to guess. I always wondered. Ultimately, I resorted to just assuming. Guessing that each time you disappear, each time you isolate, vanish, it means that you are angry or upset. 

And it’s not healthy. It’s not!

But what choice do I have when you only ever show me the good parts? What options do I have when every time I ask, you lie? 

`I take another deep breath’ 

You say you are fine, and then you go for a walk

You say you are fine, and then you go for a jog

You say you are fine and I am picking you up from a bar from god-knows where. And then I ask you again and you lie and say that you are fine!

`he wants to talk, but I persist’ 

When I push, when I engage, when I sit here – quiet 

I am quiet because I want to exist with you

I want access to this this world, this bubble 

This life that you so desperately try to hide, to gatekeep

To exclude me from 

You are angry 

You are still you, but right now, you are you, and you are angry.

I am angry too. I am angry, and I love you. 

I am angry because I have never once asked you to withhold this part of yourself. 

I never told you that I only wanted the good parts

I understand it is above me, above you, above all of us. I understand it’s because we live in a space, a world, a society 

-A society that demands us to hide, retreat, and disguise moments like this, feelings like this

But this is me, and this is you. 

And this is us

We make up this space 

We create this space 

You occupy this space with me. You exist as a person here, alongside me. Your space and your world intersect with me, here. When you leave me out, when you don’t say why you are so fucking angry 

I exist in this space alone. 

You isolate me 

That is when your anger, your feelings, things are that are about you, become about me too, okay

So don’t stand here and call me selfish; don’t dismiss me and say that I don’t understand. Of course I don’t, how could I? You are angry, I know you, but I don’t know your anger 

You are you and I know you 

But you are you and you are angry and I don’t know you with that.

`I am yelling, I pause. I lower my voice’

I am not saying that I need to fix it. I am not even saying that I can but I am saying that I just want to know, okay? This is our space, and in our space you have brought anger, and I deserve to know that.

I want to know your anger because that is a part of you and you can’t escape it. 

And yes you are right, I do not want to be a victim of your anger. So don’t take it out on me. 

But 

But fuck! If you think that not telling me, not opening up, and not being honest is the opposite of making me the victim, then I have some bad news for you. Shocking news! 

Because right now, this, this silence, this coldness, this distance?

I am a victim now.

I am standing at the forefront in the line of danger, and I am standing here alone. 

Because you are angry 

And because I love you 

So what now? What happens next? 

I didn’t realize that asking you to bring your whole self was asking for too much.

It didn’t occur to me that you would bring any less of you in this

Because I brought all of me!

`I am crying – how do I stop crying! ‘

I didn’t know, and now that I do know, I no longer want to be a part of a relationship where we are not bringing ourselves, our whole selves, into it. This is a condition of my love.

The good, the bad, the ugly.

 Oh, and by the way, anger has never been the bad or the ugly. At least not to me, anyway 

So I’ll ask you again.

Are you done, or is there anything else you would like to add?”

Picture this, a place where love exists. A place where even after a rage-driven argument has left two breathless lovers silent, there is still the mutual knowledge that love persists.