Foolishly Falling for You

38

Anita

I'm alone again. How am I alone again? This house used to be so empty for me. No one loved me and especially not my husband. He despised me, and the more I begged for his affection, the more he hated me still. And then something changed. I gave up. I gave up looking for love. I thought I was doomed to be alone. And then he changed.

What made him change?

And all of a sudden, he started pulling at my disinterest, unraveling the shell I had cocooned myself in. When did I start loving him again?

Maybe I never stopped. Slowly, at some point, I started to heal. He started to put me back together, carefully like a puzzle. My vision is eternally filled with tears. The whole world is blurry and dark, and he's not even been gone for a few hours. How will I go on this way? It hurt bad enough when I loved him and he hated me. He loved me. He loved me, he really loved me and I'll never have him again.

The loss is incomparable, except to the loss of my own child. Like a piece of me has up and died, decaying inside me, poisoning me from the inside out. Why do I lose everything this way? Am I just destined to be abandoned, alone with nothing but the ache of an eternally unhealed loss?

My finger strokes my blade. Another love of mine is gone. The first was my mother.

"How can you treat me like that?! With those cold eyes! Have I not given you everything?"

Her voice is in my mind, echoing. I said the same things. My tears are beginning to dry. I feel the familiar blanket of numbness beginning to cover me.
"You will obey me. If you do not obey me what purpose do you serve?" I hear my father shout in a distant memory I've long since buried.

My mother cries pitifully.

"Why?" She whimpers.

"Mothers make weakness. Wives make mistakes. I have an heir."

She screams, screams and screams until her throat is raw but he does mind her.

My skin itches for the comfort of the blade. I am here. I am alive. I am safe. I will remind you.
I put the blade down, pick up a pen.

My beloved Lance,
I would inquire to your well-being, but I assume it is not good. I am contemplating letting everyone know I am the murderer so that you may go free. I have lived a long and painful life. Thought I have only been alive 30 summers I feel the exhaustion of 70.

I am thinking of our night. Of your eyes. They're remind me of a summer day. I feel I may not see another summer day outside of the memory of your eyes. The world has become a dark place for me, and your loss is so fresh. I have come to need you, my Admiral.

You keep telling me I will have our home and a swing on the porch, but that was my old dream. I need the summer in your eyes. I wonder if I will see color the same? Will the world remain a blur of tears. I lost my mother. I lost Matteo. I cannot lose you. If you must hang, at least I can take my place next to you. I will not be the first time I have entertained a necklace of rope.

It suits me better than any of the jewels I wear. You are a good man, and an even better admiral. You do not deserve to hang for a crime you did not commit. I wish to free you of that fate, and yet your command to stay in the house rings in my ears. Why do I listen to you?

You must let me know if those guards are harming you. I will come to you. Let me visit you? Just to catch sight if you, and know you are whole and in one piece if only for a moment longer.

My heart aches for you,
Anita

My tears stain the paper as I send it off. A memory I've staved off for years finally fully resurfaces.

My mother hanging by the neck, at my father's command. My little body shaking, as I looked up at her. For a long time I thought that noose was a halo. Her body floating I thought perhaps she had gone to heaven. I barely got over it. I buried it deep, and when the child I used to be got in the way, I buried her too and when my child died I buried him right next to me.
There's no more space in my graveyard. What am I going to do when he disappears?