It’s him and we might as well be strangers…
It was 8:30 at night and I was sitting alone on his couch thinking about what should be done next. My heart kept beating faster as it got closer to 9 O’clock, his arrival from work. We had fought the previous night and hadn’t seen or spoken to each other for a whole day. Of course the fight consisted of who was lying to whom. He would always think I was lying and did not trust me for a second. I was a convicted prisoner who had not committed a crime in her whole entire life. Chills of remorse came crawling along my spine. “Should I have yelled? Should I have said those horrible things? But he started it. It was him! Does he even want me here anymore?” Days had gone by where all we did was fight and the level of hatred and pure anguish was increasing to its all-time high. Reoccurring conflicts that began as simple notches would turn into World War III in less than minutes. “Why won’t you just listen to me?” “I don’t want this anymore!” “Get out!” All these words were engraved in my mind now and I had no other opportunity to look forward to anything else. Our main fights were of distrust and the amount of loyalty that was or was not put into our relationship. “What did you do today? And who were you with?” It seemed as if I had left my life, committed a heinous crime and was immediately transported to death row. I had no way out now and he had me as a prisoner in his cage of hell.
Memories ran through my head, going way back to our first huge quarrel that was mainly about a friend who had, in his own words, “disrespected” him. It was a sunny and beautiful day and what I thought was going to be a nice time shared by my boyfriend and best friend, turned into one of my worst nightmares come true. As it turned out he had decided to leave me planted at her house without any sign of his well being or a notice saying, “Hey, I’ll never be back for you again.” I began thinking to myself, “Why God, why am I still suffering with someone who hurts me each and every day of my youthful life?” But at the time, I was too blind to truly see what was good for me. I had proceeded to look for him to make sure he was alright however, his mother texted me saying that he was now out with his friends and didn’t know when he would be back. I was lost, not to mention I looked like a complete fool looking for him while my friend‘s rage increased by the minute. “Why do you continue to see that bastard, Yasmin?” She’d ask me. I had no real sane answer for her, and I noticed that I never did. “It’s him.”
Once I got back into his apartment, I sat there waiting on that exact same couch; so cold and so filled with a drowning sensation of what was to come next. Hours went by and with each hour I began thinking, “What am I doing? What more is he going to do to me? I want to get out of here but my heart isn’t letting me move an inch.” Watching television or going on the computer would not distract me as much as I would have liked. And then my heart began to beat in anguish as I heard his car pull up at exactly midnight. “Finally, it’s him.” For some ridiculous reason, I had been worried to death and wanted to make sure that he was okay. But once he got home, I was in for a rude awakening. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he said under his breath while taking a quick glimpse at me and jetted straight by me. I froze and realized he had kicked me out of the apartment. As I stood outside the apartment, cold and upset, my heart told me to knock on the door and ask for an explanation. The reply? The door was slammed in my face and I was left to find my own ride home at 12:30 in the morning.
It’s 8:45 now and I am still there on that same couch, thinking about the words I would use to get me out of this Pandora’s box to only relay the message that this had gone on way too long for me to bare. However, I started to resent the fact that I was a girl because my heart would always fight back with my head. My heart would want to go on and fight through whatever was killing us. “Two and a half years”, my heart would beat. It had been such a long time since I had ever loved another being the way I loved him. “It’s him, the one that I…loved?” What would I do now if it all ended?”
The clock was ticking and I still had no words to express how much I wanted all of this to perish for good. My heartbeat increased in speed when my phone suddenly began to ring. “Oh no, it’s him. Hello?...Ok...Bye.” He was on his way home now and I was sooner losing faith that anything was going to be resolved. My thoughts became clouded by the symphony of great memories that had past. Across the living room was our album that we had been filling up since day one. I began to gaze at it as if it was a piece of meat and I hadn’t eaten for days. Thoughts came rushing in like waves towards the coast.
It was the summer of 2005 and one of my best friends was having a picnic in honor of our high school graduation. I was carefree with no worries about the real world as of yet. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky with the weather was at a whopping 80 degrees. I sat down in the gazebo located on her lawn to merely sit in awe of my accomplishment. Then suddenly my phone rang and it’s him. I answered and his voice, oh how I remember his voice, asking me to go to the movies with him and his friends. I happily accepted since I had had a slight crush on him for a small amount of time. Butterflies began to blossom in my stomach and the hopes for it all to work out came rushing towards my heart. He was the sweetest, most caring guy that I had ever met in my entire life. And after a year, I loved him.
I hear the locked door become unlocked in his apartment. It’s him and my heart begins to beat faster and faster as he makes his way inside the front door. “What am I going to say? What is he going to do? I sure hope he says he’s sorry.” All these thoughts kept making their way into my head as my gaze turned into a frightened stare towards the door. He entered with bags of food from the grocery store. I try not look towards him and turned on the television to possibly cut most of the tension that was drowning us in this tiny room. He makes his way towards the kitchen putting every item away somewhat aggressively. At this point I had realized that he had not even greeted me like he used to in the past. The warm hug where he held me so tight and the kiss that he had always wanted to give me after a longs day of work was now a cold straight walk towards the kitchen without a single word or acknowledgment of my presence, we might as well had been strangers. At this point, I have no words nor do I have the will to say anything to him. My sadness had grown into fear and now it had shaped itself into anger. I lose hope and turn my eyes onto the TV set where no one can make me this angry.
He finally comes out of the kitchen with nothing but a can of soda and a bag of chips in his hands. Perhaps he will acknowledge me now and we can watch TV like we always do, forgetting about all the problems. I should have known better as he walked right by me towards the computer and sat down. My pain was only beginning to grow because this was now the pattern every other night. It had gone from sweet greetings at the door to no greetings at all. He was angry because we had fought the previous night but it was not my fault. His anger would always get the best of him. His hurtful words along with his aggressive actions were the sharp knives that stabbed me in the heart each day. I had lost what was once the sweetest thing was now the poison in my life. I had no intentions of speaking first because I was the one who was hurt and battered by his wrong doings. So I started to stare at him while he was on the computer playing online Poker as if no one in the room was in agonizing pain. “It’s him”, I thought. It is like him, nowadays, to treat me like this. I was nothing more than a waste of space in the room now.
It was time for bed as he headed towards his mattress first. There wasn’t a single word passed around all day or night from the both of us. I felt empty, hurt and alone. He was fast asleep now while I sat there on the cold couch watching happy people on TV. “Why? Why must I still be here?” I asked myself. “Am I that much of a coward that I can’t just leave and never return? He wouldn’t even care if I died this very moment. Why stay?” As tears began to slowly make their way down my cheeks I thought back to the first time we said “I Love You”. I became baffled as to how things got so bad. It was not love anymore, it was fear; fear of losing everything that we had worked for. I quickly wiped my tears and made my way into bed. I tried my best not to wake him but as I adjusted and pulled the blanket over me, I felt his movements. I began to close my eyes to drift off to a place where my heart was no longer in pain. But a second before losing myself in dreams, I felt a sudden warmth cover my body and pressure that can only be defined as someone holding you ever so tight. It’s him. And not once all through the night did he ever let me go.
