The End

The End

Sometimes when we are dreaming we think we are awake, other times we are awake yet we think we are dreaming; or at least, we wish that we were dreaming. When I heard of his death a haze passed over me; I felt nothing, time stopped, the world went blurry. Then it collapsed. The floor sank from beneath my feet, the walls crashed in all around me, huge bits of ceiling fell on top of me but I remained there, perfectly still, silent, unable to comprehend, unable to see.

You never know the worth of something until it’s gone. And then you spend the rest of your time regretting that you didn’t recognise what you had before, you blame yourself, you somehow feel that if you had appreciated that person more, loved them more, that they wouldn’t have left you. This is your fault, you could have prevented this.

* * * * * *
I met Paul in a night club. We were on pills and ended up spending the whole night together, talking. It was my first year of university and he was the first person I’d met who I really felt a connection with. He came back to our house after the club and we ended up kissing…and kissing….and kissing. We didn’t have sex that night but we slept together, and held each other. Somehow it felt right straight from the beginning, and it wasn’t just the drugs. There was no awkwardness or wariness, we knew it was for real, this was it. When I woke up I traced my finger along his spine and kissed his back and I knew for sure that I would fall in love with him.

That day we lay in bed and drank cups of tea and watched crappy Sunday TV, something which very quickly became our habitual Sunday routine. We made love in the afternoon and then in the evening and then throughout the night. When he left the next morning I felt a piece of me leave with him.

A perfect love? Perhaps. It was beautiful; it always is at the beginning. Of course time passed and although my love for him remained strong, I was not strong enough.

I was an unfaithful girlfriend, and he knew it, and I knew it and as time went on he grew colder and more distant towards me until finally I realised that I had lost him.

We separated in November, three days later he was walking home from a friend’s house late at night, got involved in someone else’s fight, was stabbed. He died a few hours later, I didn’t get to see him before he died, I didn’t get to apologise; he died without me.

* * * * * * *
Paul was beautiful. It was often the only word I could find to describe him, he was slender and had long brown hair and brown eyes. We’d stay up all night drinking wine, discussing the world and what we wanted from it. For both of us, the world was a mess, but somehow we never quite had the dedication or the motivation to do anything about it. I used to feel ashamed when I saw petitioners and protestors in town, I was jealous of them, their courage. Sometimes I’d get angry at Paul for having so many ideas but never acting upon them, but of course I was just angry at myself.

We spent a lot of time together at first, perhaps a little too much. If I was away from him for a day I felt lost, scared; he was my refuge from the world, my comfort. When he was there everything just felt that little bit safer. My need for him frightened me and sometimes I’d push him away. This hurt him as he never played games with himself, he knew always what it was he wanted and was always honest about it. I envied this in him, his simplicity, the fact that his mind wasn’t in constant battle with itself.

‘Don’t you think we spend too much time together?’ I’d say.
‘Do you?’ he’d reply, clearly knowing that that was the reason why I’d asked.
‘Well I duno, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Just, maybe we’d appreciate each other more if we saw less of each other.’
‘Do you feel like you don’t appreciate me?’
‘No, no, you know I do…it’s just, well it doesn’t feel right to be together so much, I think we should have more space.’

He’d get angry at this point, not understanding, thinking I was going off him, getting bored of him. It wasn’t that exactly, more just that I felt stifled, unsure of myself, and desperate to clear my head. We would take drugs quite a lot, just in nightclubs and parties, but I think it had an effect. I became more withdrawn and paranoid. I wanted him, I wanted to feel close to him and I did, but I detached myself. I was scared, terrified of needing him, depending on him; so I’d alternate, between pushing him away and holding onto him tightly. We went through phases of arguing a lot, first it was just bickering but then sometimes we’d really try to hurt each other, mostly when we were drinking. He was scared that I was going to leave him, or go off with someone else.

I went off with someone else. I met Max at the pub I worked in, he was funny and full of life and I knew he fancied me. I flirted innocently with him for a while, and then one night, when we were cleaning up at the end of a shift he grabbed me and kissed me. It took me by surprise, I hadn’t kissed anyone but Paul for a little over a year and I guess I’d forgotten that it could feel like that, forceful, energetic. I lay awake that night wondering what to do, whether to tell Paul or not. I decided it would probably be best not to but then when I saw him the next day guilt overwhelmed me and I began to cry. I told him what had happened and he held me. I couldn’t believe it when he didn’t get angry, he cried though; that was worse, realising how deeply I’d hurt him, rejected him.

The next time it happened it went a step further. I still to this day can’t really explain why I did it. I was at a party with Tim, one of my male friends and getting drunker and drunker. Some time in the evening, I don’t know when, the atmosphere between us turned and he started stroking my thigh. I became instantly aroused, Tim was attractive and I guess looking back I’d always kind of fancied him. I responded to his gestures and soon we were sneaking out to go back to his room for sex. I feel awful saying it, especially now, but I enjoyed him wanting me. The feeling of having somebody want you, desire you, desperately, is something you lose when you’re with someone a long time. The actual sex was nothing special, and to be honest it left me feeling a bit hollow, as if someone had eaten away at my insides, devoured me, using every bit of me that he could get to, for his pleasure. I became a tool, an object, for that hour or so I was not myself, I was not a person; just a body.

I didn’t tell Paul straight away and my friendship with Tim went no further than that night. I blamed him, or at least I desperately wanted to blame him. Every time I looked at him I was reminded of what a filthy, selfish bitch I was to hurt the person who gave me so much love. The next morning I was sick and as I vomited I began to cry and I couldn’t stop. I felt so pathetic, so scared. This was not me but I no longer knew who I was. I needed Paul more than ever, I needed his love and comfort, to tell me who I was to him and that he would love me forever. But of course I had sacrificed that, I no longer deserved anything good from him. That day I wandered the streets, thinking, and avoiding thinking. I wanted to run away, to become a different person, a good person, who had not just done what I had. The thought of hurting Paul terrified me, I could picture his face, how it would crumple, how his self-esteem would fall apart. I couldn’t do that to him yet I couldn’t look at him in the eye knowing that I had kept this a secret.

I didn’t tell him about Tim but our relationship was ruined anyway. You can’t love someone fully if they don’t know everything about you; you can’t give yourself fully unless the receiver knows everything about you. My feelings of guilt overwhelmed me, and, unable to tell Paul of my infidelity, I resorted to the only other way I could think of to numb my pain, by sleeping with other men. Looking back, I think I really wanted to just destroy myself, to prove to myself that I had nothing worthy of love and respect in me. I quelled my self-loathing with more self-loathing, each time just wanting to feel something else, something that wasn’t what I was feeling then.

As I said earlier, he knew. Of course he did. And he left. And he died. And now I am nothing, truly nothing. I have destroyed not only our love, something which could have been beautiful, and was beautiful, but I have destroyed Paul, the most beautiful being I have ever experienced. And now I must destroy myself. I shall never love again, I shall only feel pain if I continue to live. I cannot wake up on one more morning and go through the realisation that I am nothing which is good, that I have no capacity for goodness and that nothing good shall ever come of my life. The thought of dragging my heavy soul through another day makes me want to tear at my skin. I want to do it painfully, I want to be punished before I die as I don’t believe in an afterlife. I shall slit my wrists and wait to die, and I will think only of how I deserve the pain and as I begin to drift off to death I shall feel only warmth, I will have paid for what I have done and finally I can sleep.