BETWEEN REVENGE AND LOVE

47

Tuesday 08/10/1995

A sudden explosion rips away everything in its radius.

A sudden explosion inside of me rips away all my organs, vital or not, from my bowels to my brain. 

What it leaves in its wake are holes, one huge hole that fills until spilling, with blood and surprise, yes, wonder and confusion. 

What? 

The few electronically sizzling pieces of goo that are left of my brain I grind away, trying to get it to work, work, work, work. Think, think, think.

It can't succeed. Its conditions prove too fatal, too severe.

It cannot succeed in processing the fact that he's just told me he loves me.

And even as it slowly dawns on me, the reality of what the words supposedly mean to me remains 'too fatal, too serious' an accurate way of describing things.

Too fatal, too severe. And far, far too incredible to be believed. Absurd even. 

He does not love me. He is a liar. 

We all are. Everyone, liars. 

He does not love me. He lied. 

He cannot love me. 

Because the consequences of that would be, again, too fatal, too severe. It would involve him loving a lie, a pretence, a charade. Something altogether untrue, something false.

I have deceived him and he loves it. 

But he does not love me.

Say something. It's the lie that speaks to me. The lie, ready to make me lie, primarily able to make me lie. Say something! The lie urges, from somewhere behind the frontal bone of my bombed skull. It reads my thoughts, tries to make sense of them. It looks through my eyes, glimpses what I see, glimpses him, his awaiting gaze his beautiful, beautiful honesty. 

I was wrong, couldn't have been more wrong. He is no liar. He not only expressed his feelings but admitted them, he looked me in the eyes and spoke of love.

If only he would have seen the lie lurking in them. If only he would see through the facade. 

Maybe he does. Maybe right now is the exact moment where he starts to realise, to notice the holes in me, the impacts of the explosion. Brain oozing out from behind cracked bones and torn skin. The utterly shattered chaos of a person I am.

But maybe he doesn't. Maybe the facade is convincing enough. Maybe. Maybe. 

Say something! Anything. Anything that makes at least a little bit of sense. What about an 'I love you too'? Yes, what about it. 

"I-" Two additional, significant words get stuck in my throat lamentably. There is no saying them, not to him, not to anyone, not out of my throat. 

Blame it on the explosion, if you want, on how it carelessly destroyed my vocal cords. "-I suppose, I'm no person of that kind either," I try again, "To fall in love with someone who doesn't love them back." 

It worked. I spoke. Everything is fine.

I lied. But that's alright. For I didn't lie about loving him, I do, I think, but about the reality that I in fact very much do fall in love with people who don't love me back. Or stay in love with people who have long since fallen out of it.

He doesn't know and doesn't have to either.

"Fancy coming along? We need to leave here, both of us. Unless we want to be whistled back to detention by Snape. Or even worse, Umbridge."