One White Rose

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One white rose; a single white rose that to some, is a simple or even stereotypical gesture for someone that you hold dear. That day, knowing that you loved me, made me invincible. Today, remembering who we were, what we became, and what you have made me makes me as fragile as the petals on that rose. A handwritten note. Your scrappy handwriting — the complete contrast to the captivating words that you had written. Remembering how I felt when I read the reasons you loved me makes reading this recollection harder than I could have imagined.

Imagine if the world stood still for a split second? As if the earth stopped rotating and the air filled with nothing more than a deafening silence? April 5, my world stood still for what felt like an eternity. The night was cold and the air filled with paranoia and frustration. Voices, but no words. Inhaling, but not breathing. I was losing my mind.

Filling my lungs with endless puffs of smoke. Waiting. Waiting to hear just a fraction of a ring from my phone that meant you would meet me. As time goes by and the night gets longer, I struggle to fathom at what point your insatiable hunger to make me happy evolved into your twisted and complex pursuit of my misery. Somewhere within you lay a burning appetite for dominance over how I thought, how I felt, and how I carried myself — because you knew you had the opportunity to dictate how these translated into reality.

It's a Tuesday evening. Time is slipping through my fingers and the hours drain almost in perfect synchrony with my sanity. Things had changed. We had changed. In the space of a few months, we had gone from laying awake, talking for hours about how our life would be, to debating our capability of remaining sane enough to remain in each other's lives at all.

The anticipation is unbearable and I must see you. I must hear your voice and try to understand your distance, your secrecy, the reason you have become a stranger. Is it me? Is it guilt? Is there logic behind my lunacy? You're angry. I was unable to resist my curiosity and coming to where you were was a mistake. But I know I'm not crazy. I know that there is a method to my madness and that there is someone or something that you are hiding from me.

Your name, again and again. Every fibre of my being screams your name louder than I can bear to hear it but not a single sound comes from my lips. Your name, it was my "then," it is my "now," and it will be my "always." It will be my always not because I am foolish enough to be convinced that I can cling to our foundations for anything more than a few more days longer, but because you will always be the sole individual who altered everything I thought I believed to be the truth about love and about me.

The headlights of the oncoming cars as we drive through the night are the only element of light in the dark moment we are trapped in. It's loud. I wish more than ever for a painful silence but instead, neither of us can allow the other to finish a sentence without retaliating with our own venomous and cutting words. I'm sat to your left, in the seat that I had sat so many times before. In the seat that I had sat in, on days that we drove with the sun on our skin, the wind in our hair and only our laughter to hear. But today, of course, things could not be more different. My eyes are fixed on your profile and I ask you, beg you, to tell me the truth and assure me that I have not completely lost all grip of reality. I know I'm not crazy. I just need to hear you say it.

Our house. Our home. A place that once welcomed me with warmth now felt empty and cold. I can't help but feel like I am walking down the hallway, having an out of body experience, with an atmosphere as vacant as the expression on your face. Unable to display where to place myself in an environment where I had previously been entirely at peace makes anticipating your next words or actions even more torturous. I wait. As every second crawls by, I wait for you to reassure me that what I have been imagining could not be further from the truth. I wait for you to tell me that the twisting pain in my stomach is a figure of my imagination and that you still belong to me. I wait.

One foot in front of the other. As I climb each step of the staircase, I begin to succumb to the concept that the words I longed to leave your mouth would never come. Knowing you are here with me is bittersweet. There is a slight consolation that at least if you are standing in front of me, you aren't standing in front of her, whoever she may be. The minimal relief that this brings is entirely overpowered by the demons that are consuming every inch of my sanity and persistently tell me that the feeling that surges through each vein in my body is justified and you have begun to move beyond my reach.

I battle with the thoughts in my head. I struggle to understand whether I crave the answers to my questions or whether I cannot bear to hear what I pray is not the truth. The paranoia is uncontrollable but every time I open my mouth to speak, I fail to form the words. I am strangled by my own dread and seeing my reflection stare back at me from the mirror, I see a painful reminder of the spark that you stole from me. My once bright and passionate eyes had become vacant and dark. Wiping the mascara from my tear stained cheeks, I look to you.

I have to take the opportunity. I know it's wrong, but I can't help myself. Hands trembling and breath shortened I see it before me, in black and white. The glare of your phone screen is blurred as the tears fill my eyes and restrict my view but I know that what I feared has become a reality. Those five words that I see before me have broken me; "cheated," "lied," "I like her." I quickly realize that not only what I had been imagining was confirmed, but things were much worse than I had initially suspected. Months. For months, you lay down next to me, kissed me goodnight and with each "I love you" your lie grew and you knowingly broke off another fraction of me, and what I thought I had ever meant to you.

Banging of wardrobe doors filled the echoing room. Your once soft touch became your vicious weapon. Pushing and shoving; loud screams. Careless... carelessness ended me up here.

Trapped.

Claustrophobic.

The walls touched the ceiling in perfect symmetry. I lay there. Broken and bruised. I lay there on that floor. Empty. For you no longer cared about the soul that lay at the bottom of the stairs.