Counting Up The Days (Camren)

After (Monotone)

What was once two days of collective happiness and celebration had become a particularly twisted form of torture. It seemed like the world was going out of its way to rub everyone else's jolly lives in my face. It was Lucia's comforting hand that kept me tied to the ground and went a way to still my ever shaking hands. She knew how hard this was for me, but I didn't give a second thought about how hard it must have been on her to see my heart come apart once more for a girl that wasn't her.

Once the family ordeals were over, once I had sent a bunch of photos for my team to shuffle through, select and then post the best of the bunch for all the world to see my smiling and carefree face, the two of us were able to escape down to the beach. What Lucia's hand could not do the ocean did, I let the sea breeze wash through my body, the salt cleansing my pores and acting as a rival to my tears. The sea water started to soften down the new shards of my heart and the sand allowed me to sink into it. But then the wrong person softly placed their head over my heart, and it started to beat uncontrollably for the wrong reasons.

"How are you feeling?" The head asked. I did not bother to reply, she knew it was a pointlessly obvious question anyways.

"I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or alarmed that your heart is beating so fast right now." Lucia half joked. I did not reply once more- this time it wasn't even a question so why bother. "Seriously though, are you okay? Like I know you aren't but are you feeling sick or something?" I didn't reply this time either, but by now I wouldn't have been able to even if I'd have wanted to. My body had frozen as an icy chill ran through my being like a virus, reaching the tip of my toes in a matter of seconds. I briefly smiled at the thought that it all seemed very Harry Potter-like, until I realised that I could not even smile.

Immediately the gentle sea breeze inside of me turned into the beginnings of a hurricane, wrecking havoc and disarray within, turning my organs into strips and splinters of useless flesh. Every fibre in my body screamed but not a sound came out of my parched useless mouth. It wasn't just a desolate poet's metaphor anymore when I said Camila's absence had turned me to stone.

The next thing I knew was white. White noise, white hot, whiteout. White had suddenly taken control over the synaptic functions in my body, and everything was white- except the colour. That was black. The sort of black that blinds you, not the blindness that's black. Everything was so full: full of mourning, full of emptiness, full of viscous black blood. It was as simple as black and white, and as complicated as the juxtaposition that the monotonous colours created.

I would describe what I was feeling as well, but all I remember is the hue.

The first thing other than a block colour that I saw was the heart rate monitor next to the white linen sheets. It took me longer than I care to admit to realise what it was doing, and then all I could think about was the fact that the machine had taken over the job of my own bloody heart. The piece of flesh had been replaced by a cold callous machine, the human thing had been left by the ocean where it will always remain and following nothing but the pull of the moon: Camila and I's love.

I don't understand hearts. The saying goes that your heart is broken, but it always keeps beating through loss of love. Instead I say that my life is broken. My life, unfortunately unlike my heart, is irreparably changed.

Aristotle was stupid when he said that the heart was the source of intelligence, motion, and sensation, and the brain and lungs existed to cool the heart. He is the culprit for as to why we associate the scarlet, pulsating lump of raw flesh with such a thing as love. It is the brain, with its infinite pathways and complexity, which embodies the essence of the mind and the soul. Instead it is cheated by the heart, who gets all the literary credit for being the governor of emotion. The heart is a cheater, it cheats us out of love. We put all of our faith into the fact that the heart is what cultivates our love, only to find out that it was the neglected brain all along. By the time you realise this, it's too late and you're left without that person, or you're with someone else.