A Retelling.
I am the villain in this story. Because I killed you. Because I let myself fall in love with you, knowing the consequences and not giving a fuck.
You died, but I still saw you everywhere. Not as a ghost, but as flesh and blood. No, a ghost would have been romantic, like something out of a 19th century novel set on a dark moor. No, you walked and breathed and existed as a man, right in front of me, but not the man I had loved.
Your handsome face, the one I’d stared at far too many times for far too long across coffee shops and classrooms and crowded rooms had become unrecognizable. Every line or asymmetry was heightened, and I no longer liked looking at it because it was so devoid of feeling for me. It was stoic and strained.
How many times did we try to end it? Five? Ten? You, always the initiator. Me, ever the rationalizer. But you always came back. You were accompanied by a huge sigh of resignation, but you came back. And you always did it gently, like sharing your clementine with me when I was sick or offering me a pen. You used to say so much in the small things, words that only I could hear.
What we tried to keep hidden could no longer be contained. We needed to be near each other, even if it meant other people might see us together. We were friends. We made excuses. We pretended. We tried too hard. But two married people of the opposite sex can’t be that kind of friend to each other without some kind of change. We started needing each other. And I was okay with the potential outcome. I was okay hurting someone else. That’s what made me the bad guy.
Remember the park you took me to when you wanted to end it all? That beautiful manor with the hidden garden. Rain was coming, so the sky was gray and it smelled like earth, what I imagined the beginning of Creation to smell like. You, Adam and me, Eve. Our paradise.
“Why are you ruining this place for me? Why are you breaking my heart here?” I asked.
This was a place for proposals and romantic walks at dusk. But you told me we couldn’t see each other anymore. And I cried and said I didn’t want that. I couldn’t bear it. And you gave in again.
In hindsight, I see now I should have let you go. Because it was then that you started to resent me and all you felt for me because it made you hate yourself. And the more you hated yourself, the more you disappeared. I remember, it was my birthday. A mutual friend (really, an acquaintance) mentioned that you’d told her everything. How I seduced and tempted you, but you just wanted friendship. How you wanted none of it. I couldn’t breathe for a moment. We were meeting up with you at a bar to end the birthday night. I swallowed hard to avoid tears, and when we arrived at the bar, over-loud with hip hop music, you were standing there with a beer. You went to hug me, that goofy smile on your face, and I yelled, “I hate you!” in your ear, and I meant the opposite, with all my heart.
We slowly unraveled from that night on, in angry emails and stories that were veiled attempts at hurting each other. But I was the frayed end, friendless and lonely, and you were the ball of string, still tightly curled in on itself, surrounded by people who loved you and thought you were good.
We never touched physically, but were together in every other way that matters.
Sometimes two people fall in love because they’re asking the same questions of life at that point in time. We were both wondering, Is this all? But we came to different conclusions.
The story is a sad one, and to most people, at its bare bones, it’s a failed attempt at adultery by an unhappy woman who unknowingly seduced a confused man. I know differently—and I think you do too.
I can still let myself believe that we lived one of the greatest romances ever because: You were only for me. That certain person you were in those moments, just the two of us, belonged to me alone.
