Red ~ TWD (Daryl Dixon)

Take It All Back

I underestimated the fallout the night at the gas station would have on my relationship with Daryl. I hadn't expected flowers and candy, I wasn't delusion (most days), but at the same time the precision with which he cut me out of his life was swift and exacting.

At first I hoped he simply needed distance to process what happened between us so I gave it to him. I accepted that when I walked into a room he would inevitably find a reason to leave. I learned to live with the fact we no longer occupied the same sleeping space at night. I let his harsh, insulting words bounce off me without comment on the rare occasions he took the time to address me directly.

It wasn't easy, but I endured it because I incorrectly assumed it was only temporary. That eventually whatever was plaguing him about that night would work itself out and things would go back to normal, that we would go back to normal. Normal for us anyway. What I learned in the past four days was that assumptions were dangerous things. My truth and his were dining at different dinner tables. Hell, they were at entirely different restaurants.

What added insult to very serious injury was his withdrawal was confined to just me. He still strategized with Rick, took lighthearted jabs at Glenn, and offered a comforting presence for Carol when she needed it. Physically there was never much distance between us, sometimes only feet when the group was forced to hole up in rooms only slightly larger than the closet the two of us were once stuffed in, but there was a chasm between us all the same. A deep, gaping hole I was unable to comprehend much less bridge.

On the nights when he did sleep he made an art form out of finding the corner furthest away from me and curling into it in an effort to put more distance between us. I hadn't realized how much I missed him being next to me until he was gone. Didn't know how I longed to hear his voice until he was silent. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I swore could still feel him, lying beside me, holding me close. The fact my mind was imagining his presence like a phantom limb  was as humiliating as it was infuriating.

Somehow in the span of a few seconds everything we built unraveled and reduced us to virtual strangers, and I had no idea how to fix it. What's worse I wasn't sure I wanted to. I was by no means an expert in relationships, but I knew regret when I saw it. He may not have spoken any civil words to me in days, but his actions screamed exactly how he felt.

Disgust.

Mistake.

It hurt more than it should have given it was only one kiss, but I was fresh out of time machines so there was no going back. So instead, I found a way to move forward. I dealt with the rejection the only way I knew how. The further he pushed me the further I retreated. I was good at pulling away, both physically and emotionally. Rejection teaches you how to reject, and I majored in that particular subject in my youth.

I wasn't my mother. I didn't believe the lies women told themselves in an effort to justify men who treated them poorly. If life had taught me anything it was if someone treated you like they didn't care it was because they didn't. There were no exceptions. No fairy tale endings. Life may be cold and brutal but it held nothing on love. Love was a cancer that metastasized until it infected all your vital organs, killing you slowly from the inside. I had no intentions of dying that particular death.

Sometimes the only way to heal a wound was to stop touching it.

Unfortunately it was impossible to pull away from Daryl without also pulling away from the group as a whole. He was too intertwined in the very fabric of our dynamic to single out. There was simply no way to cut around him without also cutting through the ties that held the others. It killed me to see the hurt look on their faces as I rebuffed their efforts to help, but I'd do anything to ease the ache in my chest and the only thing that seemed to help was distance.