Complicated Like That

Running

I remember the day like it was yesterday. Imagine that, something so traumatising that even a year later, you're haunted by the memory of it. I think that was the day I learnt the most about myself. You had promised me closure. The sun was setting on a late winter's afternoon. Monday, the dreaded day, a week after I saw you laughing, smiling, the inside jokes and memories you brought up. I guess you never really know when something is about to crash until it does. And it becomes this distant memory that you force yourself to bury, but it keeps on replaying in you head like some twisted joke. You hate it.

The sun was golden against your skin. The flecks of gold translated into the hues of honey in your gorgeous eyes and I stood there, in awe of it - in awe of you. You joked that day too. Refused to enter my room knowing that I would fight the second you tried to leave. I sat on the floor. The cold from the tiles travelled along my knees and body, contrast to the burning in my throat and chest while I held onto the warmest thing I knew - your legs. With every word that left your mouth, tears fell from my eyes exponentially increasing while you cut deeper into my bleeding heart and that was my first lesson. 

You didn't care about what you had to say, you knew what it would do to me, but you said it anyway. I, the hopeless fool I am, held too much value to your words as if they were sacred. You knew that too. It didn't matter how you felt, watching me sit there on the floor, frozen while clinging onto you and sobbing my heart out. The pain, the torture, the mistrust and sky high stoned, thick wall that would be built soon after was all part of a plan - a means to an end - your means to my end. It was just one of those things you felt like you needed to do. I became the collateral damage in the war you had with yourself. What mattered was me, how I hoped that after those callous, heartless words left your mouth, you would pull me up and say that you cared about me.

That didn't happen. My heartbreak infuriated you, as if it was an inconvenience to your visit. Perhaps, it was. Perhaps, it confirmed how much I cared about you and valued you, and that was the inconvenience. In the anger that echoed loudly behind your voice as you insisted for me to stop crying, I felt the jaring stab. You don't care. That reality was kerosene to the flame that was my agonising pain. It compelled me into reliving every other moment between us. Did you ever care? But the position you held in my life was enough to fiercely argue with this newly lit flame of agony. I knew you cared, at least for one moment in our rollercoaster, death ride of a friendship. And that one single, irrelevant moment was enough for me to fight.

I fought almost as passionately as I cried my broken heart away. I could feel my chest closing in on me with every breath I took. My eyes shut - wishing, praying that this was just some tragic joke my inner demons got off on. But it wasn't. This realization made me wish I could die on this spot. With every fibre in my being, I raised my voice and argued back. Pleaded. Begged. Held onto your legs while you dragged me on the way to open the door. The best thing to ever happen to me quickly became the thing that caused me the worst pain. I couldn't decide for the life of me on whether to let you go or convince you to stay.

Sudden silence while I stood outside in the cold, the darkness of the night taunting me as the shadow of you disappeared from my field of vision. No - denial flowed through my veins. This isn't how I'm going to leave things. My legs moved against my will. I'm running. I've always wanted to run, away from my life, away from my problems. And now, there's you. I've always wanted to run. But I can't decide if it's away from you or towards you. I'm running as if my life depended on it and maybe it did. Maybe this was my last chance to make things better.

Now I'm running.

Running.

Bare feet pattering against the icy tar of the road.  

Running.

Pouncing on this lonely, dark road for dear life.

Running.