The Decision

I decided to leave you.

I told myself I didn’t need you. Enough is enough, I said. Goodbye, I’m off. Sure, you said. I screamed at your smirking face, and slammed the door behind me.

They came to me, eyes wide and mouths open. They asked why you had hurt me, ears wagging in anticipation of the tongue-wagging to come. I told them that I was the one who tried to hurt you, so that you never could. They did not understand and walked away.

I needed you. I was afraid. Afraid of being hurt, afraid of being betrayed. Afraid that I would not be able to heal myself again. Children show their scars as medals. Lovers show theirs as secrets. I hide my scars and nurse them in the hope that they will heal someday. You healed mine, but you could have torn me apart like a razor blade digging into the soft skin above a vein. So I decided not to wait for my blood to drip. I decided to leave before you ripped me into shreds.

Time passed. I threw out every reminder of you from my heart, leaving it strangely empty. I attempted to fill it with yet more emptiness. I focused my brain on words and lines and pages, I read novels and lived poetry. I sweated through rugby and climbed steep hills. I kept my hands busy with guitar strings and tuned my mind to their music. I was an actor acting a role in a play. I smiled and danced and flirted with a dozen pretty faces and soft hands, liking all, wanting none. I blotted you out of my thoughts. I pushed you from my dreams into my nightmares.

Although you never asked me to explain, I justified my decision again and again in my own private court. I’m only protecting myself, aren’t I? You don’t need me anyway, do you? How much longer would I have had till you left me, anyway? Isn’t it safer that I be the one to leave? I’m happy. I’m proud. I need nothing and no one. I have a life! The words compelled me to repeat them till they lost their hollowness.

In the echoes ringing through the empty chambers of my heart, I heard your voice. I shut my ears, turned my back and took another dose of my sleeping pills. I taught myself to be strong and independent. I forced myself to find calm in solitude.

I don’t need you. Or anyone else.



Aeons later, my strength breaks and the façade cracks. I crawl back to you and call your name. Come to my cold bed tonight and make it warm. Smile for me. Fill me with your body and your love. I gasp your name between ragged breaths.

You look at me with infinite understanding - you saw it coming all along. I realize then that I am the spider you chose not to crush. My locks fall apart and the walls crash down. My fists unclench slowly in surrender. Stripped of all pride and pretense, I lie naked before your truth and beg for your mercy.

In a broken voice, I repeat endlessly, shamelessly, “I love you.”