Private Joy.

Chp 26.

Nothing has changed...and yet everything has changed. Days seem to draw on longer than they actually are and Prince is at the recording studio more than ever now. Some nights he doesn't even come home and when he is, he's unconsciously distant and I feel like I'm a thousand miles away from him.

Happiness is now a foreign word to us both as we obviously don't share it together.

Sometimes I contemplate just going back home without telling him so that I can take care of mom. I felt like a waste of space around here. Just a dead weight, useless, not needed by anyone or anything. I don't even know why I was feeling this way.

My mind felt like a labyrinth maze as I wandered around aimlessly into dead ends as I tried to figure out why my life had taken this path. This god awful path.

Whenever I reached my hand out to him, he wasn't there nor did he notice my cries of attention as the loneliness thickened like a tumour inside of me. Whether he was aware of his sudden change of behaviour towards me or not. He never mentioned it or apologised to me.

He barely talked to me at all these days which lead to a eerie silence between us like the calm before a storm.

I felt like I was going insane, it was as if I was the only one who could see what was happening to our suddenly crumbling relationship. So each day I shout internally, pointing rapidly at nothing like a mad woman, desperately begging him to realise or even just slightly hint at the fact that he knew that we weren't the same anymore.

My life had already been demolished in every other aspect. I refused to lose the one sense of joy I had left within me. The only selfless possession that I called mine.
I loved him..despite the very fact that I died of heart failure every time I looked at him.

I swear I wanted nothing more than to blow away the gloomy clouds that surrounded the roof over our heads.

It didn't help my already darkened way of thinking.

Writing poetry was only my saviour in this as it helped recycle the depression inside of me. As my ink pen scratched hastily across the fragile paper of my notebook, I glanced at the vinyl player in the living room.

I needed some music to fill this mind-numbing stillness within the air. I took my precious time as I searched through the dozens of singles that I shared with Prince, despite already knowing what I was looking for.

Our taste was strangely diverse..you might say.

I grabbed the record as soon as my view came into contact with it. I shuffled over to the player and quickly set it up. I put the needle down and sat back in a tired huff as the sound of descending chords from a ominous synthesizer overcame the room.

"Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find..
I tried to reach for you, but you have closed your mind...
Whatever happened to our love ?
I wish I understood..it used to be so nice, it used to be so good"

Whenever I listened to this song in the past, I always felt that Agnetha's production of vocals at the beginning of the song sounded as if she were about to burst into tears whilst on the verge of a hideous breakdown.

I could definitely relate to that now.

I closed my eyes, resting my head against the sofa as I listened to the chorus.

"So when you're near me, darling can't you hear me S. O. S.
The love you gave me, nothing else can save me S. O. S.
When you're gone how can I even try to go on ?
When you're gone, though I try how can I carry on?

You seem so far away though you are standing near...
You made me feel alive, but something died I fear...
I really tried to make it out...I wish I understood
What happened to our love, it used to be so good.."

"Did you just write this poem ?" said his voice, causing me to jump as he moved the needle off the record. He had my notebook in his hands, his eyes staring me down with a blank expression.

"Uh..yeah, I did" I replied hesitantly. This was the first time we had spoken in god knows how long so I stood up and walked towards him, looking over his shoulder so that I could see the poem he was reading. I bit my lip as I mentally face-palmed.

This wasn't particularly a nice poem.

"It's a common but rare feeling, it's white noise in a black room. It's strangling your throat and it's draining your body. It's like you're drowning in a sea full of dead souls. Nothing to grasp or cling onto..so you soak into the dampened sand.

You miss the comfort of being sad because you wish you could just feel something.
But that's the thing, you are missing that something so you are surrounded by the vast inevitable. You look around and cry for help as you wonder why no one can hear you.

Then you remember that you're silent and that a few words can stop them from worrying. They can't see the emptiness inside you because there's simply nothing there. So how do you get out of something that's not even existing."

He looked up at me, studying my face for a brief moment. My eyes pleaded for him to say something but he didn't say anything, not even a single word.

He just closed the notebook with a soft thud and walked off, not looking back.

"Whatever happened to our love..."
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Song above - 'S.O.S' by ABBA.