He literally took my heart. Ripped it out, actually -- bloody and still pumping. I could feel an echo, a memory, of where it used to be. I asked him to take it. I watched him, encouraged him even, as he held the glimmering blade and shoved it into my waiting chest. The pain was exquisite torture, but less intense than heart-break. His stoic nature fascinated me, it seduced me into masochism; he didn't reveal emotions -- no pity, no fear, no remorse, no sadness. It simply was. I didn't exist to him. I was a shell, a vessel, a body; I was emptiness. I wondered what he would do now that he held the crimson, palpitating muscle in his hands. But he didn't want it; he just tossed it. This time though, it didn't hurt. His rejections no longer mattered because I no longer felt. Never again would I experience sorrow or anger, pleasure or joy, love or hate. Heartless, I was immune to emotions. I questioned to what extent -- would I still be filled with peace when I closed my eyes under the warm sun? Would a star-dotted sky still take my breath away? Would the blue and white salty waters of the world remain a source of solace and amazement? How would my mind react now that it no longer had to battle my heart? Was I done dreaming?
I watched him walk away, his dark silhouette growing smaller and smaller into oblivion. As his figure faded into the horizon, so did every memory I had of him. Now that my heart and my mind were no longer connected, I was free of emotional ties. My memory stored images, stories I associated with him, but they no longer held an impact, it was almost like they never happened. The only pain I could feel was in my chest, in the hollow space between my breasts. The blood had stopped and the skin was rapidly regenerating, so much so that I only had a light, star-shaped scar where the knife had penetrated. I waited a few moments before walking towards my new life.
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We met my last year of college. I was young, free-spirited, and full of ideals -- I romanticized revolutions of the past and of far-away lands, I believed we would all one day be equal and I had no doubt that happy endings existed. Up until then, my life had been full of ups and downs, spirals and twists, but never once had my faith in liberty, justice and love wavered. I ran free.
I never expected to meet him; it was just one of those things that unexpectedly falls into your lap and it seems so right, that we associate it with fate. My first impression of him was that he was fat, and that he donned a shuffle when he walked. That view faded soon enough -- his fat transformed into big, powerful and masculine; His shuffle became a dominating stride, confident and war-like. I was hooked. I was never naive, but I possessed a strange innocence that was inherently genuine. With him, I relaxed and allowed my heart to feel. And it felt. For the first time, I met a man I wanted in my life and that I could see a future with. My mind was a bit more stubborn. A true cynic, my mind battled my heart. I wish my mind was the victor. But my heart was strong and relentless and no matter how hard my mind fought, whenever I saw his face and his dimpled smile, my heart triumphed.
To this day, I don't know what I saw in him. He was average looking, rough around the edges and could not put a sentence together without first peppering it with profanity. He lacked tact and always said the wrong thing. More importantly, with him, I never knew where I stood. Some days I was sure he cared, but he just lacked the sensitivity to express it. Other days, most days, I wondered why he wasted his time and mine when his heart wasn't in it. It wasn't anything he said, but everything he didn't say. It wasn't anything he did, but everything he didn't do. He was the secret garden I wanted to discover, the ocean of thoughts whose depth I wanted to explore. He was so close, but always so far.
We continued that way for months. The deeper in love that I fell, the more I had to lose. Everything was always his terms, his conditions. I found myself fading away. Instead of the outspoken, opinionated rebel, I was now nice and sweet. Women should be seen, not heard. I worked hard at being a "girl" - upbeat, pretty, and sensitive. But it wasn't me. As such, I slowly evaporated. I learned to smile and nod, to keep opinions to myself, to aim to please. My fire dimmed. My spirit died. Without realizing it, I gave him a marionette me and he didn't want it. I, on the other hand, wanted all of him. I wanted his confidence, his smile, his entitlement and privilege. I wanted the man he was the during the day and the child he was in his sleep -- sweet, unguarded and innocent. That's when I loved him most, while he slept. There was nothing I longed for more than sleeping by his side -- our limbs radiating heat, his breath lullabying me into the most delicious slumber. Months later, after I surrendered by body to him, I reminisced to those nights when I watched him sleep and felt true intimacy, the intimacy the union of our bodies never experienced.
In retrospect, I guess I always knew how it would end; my intuition prophesized it. I knew my heart would break, I just didn't expect the intolerable pain, the flooding tears, the swollen eyes, the emptiness... I knew he could never love me. He wanted more; he needed more. Or maybe, he wanted less; he needed less. We were different. We didn't share ideals. We didn't share backgrounds, statuses, minds. I was the intellectual to his jock. I was the irrationality to his common sense. I was the pauper to his prince. My creativity outshone his dullness, intimidated his blandness. His neutrality confiscated my confidence, brought out my insecurities, made me run and hide. Occasionally I would reemerge, take a swing at him, a jab, a round-house kick -- anything that would evoke an emotion. But nothing ever did. He would just look at me, silently. He would look at me, but he would never see me.
Finally, the frustration of loving a creature like him caught up to me. Away from him I was miserable, always questioning myself -- was I not smart enough? Pretty enough? Thin enough? Fat enough? Why wasn't I enough? I couldn't do it anymore; I needed to break free.
It was clean break. He was unfazed as always. "It's not that you're a bitch or anything," he said. "I'm just at that age, you know? I should be looking to settle down and shit and I don't feel we are at the same mental level. I can't date just to date."
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The last time I saw him was a cold, spring evening. For reasons I'll never understand, he asked me out again. "To celebrate our birthdays," he said. That night was perfect. We talked, danced, kissed. That night, everything seemed more alive: the stars shone brighter, the air was crisper, my heart beat stronger. Everything was magic. For just a few hours, I surrendered to the fantasy. But this wasn't my fairy tale. This didn't have a happily ever after. Heartbroken and half-naked, I fought the tears that were welling up in my eyes and watched him turn his back and walk out the door one last time.
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Even after we stopped seeing each other, he haunted my every waking moment. He wasn't present anymore and it hurt. My mind, cynical and independent, celebrated my freedom, but heart couldn't stand it -- it was destroyed.
Night after night, I dreamt of him. In my dreams, he never acknowledged me. I searched for him, hoped to gain clarity, find answers. I needed something to kill my love and steal my hope. But nothing changed. Instead, I surrendered to desperation and embraced the pain, as intricate as butterfly threaded lace and as poisonous as a black widow's kiss.
After a while the pain replaced him and I became dependent on it. Like a heroin addict, I injected suffering into my bloodstream and needed it to function. As long as I hurt, my love lived. I wondered if I had been brainwashed by soap operas. I remembered writing my thesis paper on the virgin/whore dichotomy and examining the two distinct roles as they are portrayed in short stories and soap operas. In one of the books I used, Cleófilas yearned for the passion of soap operas "because to suffer for love is good. The pain all sweet somehow. In the end."
Somewhere between writing and loving, I believed it. My love justified my suffering. My suffering justified my love. I moved through the world in penance, preaching the gospel of a disillusioned heart and disappearing dreams. The more I hurt, the more I loved, the more worthy I became.
One day, I woke up and looked at my reflection; it terrified me. I didn't recognize myself. I had become what I thought he saw: a shell, just a body void of the purest essences that had once been me -- vivacity, courage, pride, passion. That was the day I knew he had to cut my heart out.
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