I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did. Leaving you was the hardest, most impulsive thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t mean to end it then. I thought we were still fine, but relationships can turn on a dime, and none would know better than I.
We were lying in bed after making love, and you’d turned away to light a cigarette, even though you knew I hated it when you smoked. I put up with it because I loved everything about you so desperately much that I couldn’t make myself care when you did little annoying things like that. In fact I thought everything about you was perfect. Usually I was just sort of benevolently amused when you did something that I didn‘t agree with. It had never been a real issue before, but I hated you smoking, and drinking and swearing. You constantly acted like you had something to prove and it just bugged me sometimes. Like then. I grabbed the cigarette from your still-flushed lips and put it out in the ashtray by our bed. It had just been an impulse, I had wanted to see how you reacted.
It seems stupid that a little thing like that was the beginnings of something so painful it felt like you’d ripped out my heart and swallowed it down in front of me.
You looked at me, taken aback, and then tried to shrug it off, pulling another cigarette out of the pack lying next to the table. I grabbed it before you could even start to light it, scowling for real this time. Did I look like a pushover?! I did not want to be ignored. I was trying to prove a point and it would have been nice if you listened to me once in a while. You glared at me, completely not comprehending what was going on. I had never done anything like that before, usually it was all adoring glances and a kind of sweet-and-sad love. Like we were afraid to lose it just because we didn’t know how to cope without the other person. I had been your best friend for so many years I hadn’t even noticed that I was falling for you until you’d confessed. And now neither of us knew what to do… were we supposed to forget it had happened, or talk about it? Or were we just destined for a major fight?
It seemed that the latter was in order for the day.
“What the Hell did you do that for?!” you asked sharply, shaking out the pack. “That was my last cigarette!”
“Good,” I said firmly.
“Huh?”
“I said, good.” I repeated, nonplused. “You shouldn’t smoke, I hate it, you’re going to kill yourself someday.”
“Your worrying is what’s killing me.” you snapped back. “Lay off with the mother-hen act. It doesn’t suit you.”
“What if I care about you, is it a crime?” I almost screeched.
“You aren’t me, you haven’t the slightest idea why I do things!”
“Oh, so now you’re going to tell me that there’s a really good reason that you smoke?” sarcasm dripping off my every word.
“Maybe! I don’t know why you’re all the sudden so interested in my life. I didn’t think you’d care that much. Sheesh, it was just a cigarette.”
“Sheesh yourself! I don’t like being ignored, and obviously that’s all I’ve been getting these last years. I don’t have time to waste on an empty relationship.”
“Oh, do excuse me, but I thought time was all you had. You certainly don’t do anything useful with it, do you?”
“I guess I don’t! I’ve been stuck here for 3 years, wasting my life with an insufferable, insensitive bitch who only cares about herself!” I was sitting up in bed now, the covers falling around me in a puddle of sun-dried cotton. Angrily I half lunged out of bed, wrapping a sheet around myself as I did so.
“I’m leaving,” I said calmly to the tousle-haired beauty that I had loved for over ten years. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I never went back.
At first I was convinced that we were supposed to kiss and make up. I was determined to go back to you as soon as soon as night fell. But when the darkness came, it took root somewhere in my heart and suddenly that didn’t seem right, that I should come crawling back to you for forgiveness. Why should I have to do all that work? You were the one who started the fight anyways. I didn’t go home the next day either. Or the next. Days turned into weeks and now it’s been over 3 years since I’ve held you. I still tell myself that I’m going to come back. Maybe someday I still will.