My Damn Writing

It was raining. I remember that especially, because it was just so cliché. You were holding the letter I wrote to you in your hands, slowly sliding your gaze between that damned sheet of paper, my damn writing, and my face. I stared at you with bated breath as though waiting for your critique of it. You inhaled sharply, and I stopped breathing, for fear of what you were drawing your breath in to say.

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right,” you finally told me. You did not lace your words with any kind of opinion or hint as to what was coming next. I think I started breathing again. For once in my life, I wished I was not right. As you dropped the paper, my damn writing, to the floorboard of my car and finally looked at me in earnest, my heart hurt. You were so beautiful. You were like a drug for my eyes, for my heart.

A drug I was about to be cut off from.

The air in my small, fogged up car changed. It was August, yet somehow it became unbearably cold. That sparkle in your wonderful, deep eyes dimmed as you hardened yourself to the harshness of your forthcoming words. I felt it coming I suppose, but the visual intoxicant that was you kept my mind in enough of a haze to make it jarring, to make it really hurt.

In that instant, time froze, just as the words were about to leave your lips. I mentally ran through all the memories we had – the fights, the sex, the tears, the cuddles. I remembered how utterly ecstatic you made me, and how bitterly depressed I felt after yet another dispute. As time began to start moving again, I braced myself to receive your advice on how we could fix things.

“Maybe… maybe we should just stop.”

I think my heart stopped pretty shortly after that. My mind rapidly tried to analyze your words, but every time it came to the conclusion it skipped back to the beginning, unable to process the horrible truth behind the words. Stop? The more I ran the word through my head, the less it made sense, the less I wanted to believe. I gaped at you in disbelief.

“Stop? I think it’s a bit late for that,” I rationalized. We were too far into this, too much in love. You were like fire to me. I expected to be warm. I expected to get burned. Worst-case scenario, I expected to fall in, to catch fire, to burn up completely until there was nothing left. I had never even considered the possibility of the fire going out.

This time you at least had the grace to look down, away from my face that was teetering on the brink of destruction. You inhaled again, then brought your eyes back to mine. This time the sparkle was gone completely. I saw no fire in those eyes.

“Maybe for you it is.”

Then you opened the car door and stepped out into the rain. It was really pouring down hard, so once you were only about fifteen feet from my car I already could not see you. At first I was too stunned, too horrified to even cry. I didn’t feel anything. Then, as realization started to dawn on me, dusk began to fall on my mind. I felt completely hopeless. I thought of all the things I was looking forward to – passing my AP exams, getting into college, getting scholarships, graduating with honors, finishing a book, getting published. I conjured up images of all these things, but without you there holding my hand, loving me, I couldn’t imagine being happy about any of them.

I knew at the back of my mind that I would eventually heal, but for that moment, all that I could do was rest my forehead on the steering wheel and sob, savoring the pain. I let the anguish wash over me, surround me, cocoon me. My eyes burned, my heart hurt, my soul radiated agony. I felt myself breaking, falling to pieces in the driver’s seat, which was nothing if not ironic.

As despair forced its way inside me, wrapping itself around my heart, I turned my head to the side, away from the window, away from the outside world where people were happy and fulfilled. I looked at the seat you were in only moments ago. I looked down, away from that window as well, and my eyes chanced upon the letter, the damned letter that began the end of us. Me and my damn writing. I grabbed the letter and tore it to shreds, enraged at it for ruining us. I let the shreds fall to the floor like melancholy confetti. My damn writing. From that moment, I became scared of the things I wrote, of the power they had. You made me realize the power of my own words, of all my damn writing.

I have to write. I can’t not write. The words flow through me like the oxygen in my blood. Not only did you break my heart, you broke my spirit, my words. You took writing away from me. You kept me scared. You paralyzed my pen. You took it away from me and made me fear the power of words. I kept writing, but I never made much progress. I was too afraid.

Then one day, out of the blue, you spoke to me. You were nice, gentle, cordial. You behaved like nothing had happened, nothing at all. I had already forgiven you, so I held my own against you this time. As the conversation progressed, you became more and more friendly. Too friendly. You subtly hinted that you were bored and looking for a distraction, looking pointedly at me. I could see it in your eyes that you missed me. I smiled calmly, not accepting your advances, just acknowledging them. You asked me if I remembered a poem I wrote to you on one of our anniversaries. I still know every word of it, my damn writing. You told me you wanted that back, the passion behind my words. My smile grew larger, but again I said nothing.

I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t pulled the poem from your pocket. You unfolded it and showed it to me, my damn writing once again shoved back into my face by you. My damn writing still controlled you, but it was then that I realized that you were exploiting my own words to control me as well. I looked at the paper in your hands and I could feel the magic emanating from the page, the power manifesting itself physically. I looked you in the eye and smiled as I violently snatched the paper away from you. I watched the look of confusion on your face as I ripped away my words from you and I smiled triumphantly back.

“I’m taking it back. It’s my damn writing.”