Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
PEOPLE HAVE A knack for ruining everything beautiful. We pick flowers just to watch them die on our dining tables.
It was something I came to realise when I noticed the bouquet of white tulips withering in the pit of the column vase. Albeit the brown had began to predominate the milky hue, it was nearly impossible to deny the beauty of the vase and the way it held the batch together — in its own tragic way, it's sort of romantic.
In many ways, it was the mirrored version of Chris and I's relationship. He was the vase; poised, strong and held everything together. As I was the latter; wilting, falling apart at the seams, dying. But the true parallel was the blatant despair that strained. The vase was desperately holding something together that had already fallen apart. The irony was almost striking.
I was just about to water it for the umpteenth time that week, only to pause when I noticed the scanty piece of paper that was plunged inside the nosegay. I reached over, plucking it and scrutinised it with weary eyes. In a unmistakable, sloppy scrawl it read:
Through better or worse
- Yours, Chris.
Stiflinga lengthy sigh, I took the note and ripped it apart only to dispose of it in the dustbin. Trust that Christopher Gates would be one to guilt-trip his wife with meaningless vows shortly after cheating on her. Bastard.
That was always Chris' greatest hamartia – he couldn't give a fuck any of those times that it mattered, but once it didn't that's when he started kicking himself in the arse. It's the same way now, only he was being persistent. Beginning with the flowers and now these half-arse, meaningless letters that he kept writing. It was a shame that worse had to come to worst before he did either of those things.
It'd be simpler to say that I hated who he had become but even I knew that was a far cry from the truth. If anything, I hated that I loved him enough to blur the lines when it came to anything regarding him.
And it was so easy to do so considering he wasn't a downright terrible person – he was just very flawed and unafraid to canvas himself in the worst of ways. The forlorn, handwritten love letters were never anything complex or special and maybe that's why everything he wrote was so hard hitting and left a slow-burn in my chest. I'm sorry. I love you. Take me back. Fuck you. I can't live without you.
Everything I did after finding out about my husband's affair was a convoluted mess that I couldn't quite stomach until a week had passed. I was beelining toward our bedroom, tugging off an ivory blouse, then trousers; discarding them onto the carpeted floor. With flushed cheeks, I coiled my buttery blonde hair into a topknot, fanning my curtain fringe over my forehead, before favouring a plain white tee and tugging on a pair of boyfriend jeans. I then raided my wardrobe. Flinging random attires in my carry-on, and slipping in some essential toiletries in the outward pockets, I trudged to the ground floor with heavy footfalls and shoulders wracked with sobs.
