The first light hits the window of my bedroom. It is raining outside, blessing the world with prosperous rain and creating a soft light that sneaks across the floor into the bathroom. There, I sit, fingering soft white chiffon, slightly embroidered with beautiful flowers and leaves, glowing surrealistically in the light. The tiara that sits beside me glimmers excitedly, knowing the time is soon. I glance up to my bedroom from the bathroom door, and look over to the empty bed. The sheets rumpled, twisted, and the warmth from two bodies lying together having been gone for hours. I then shift my eyes to my desk, a pair of papers stapled together waiting expectantly. I have read it before. I will read it one last time.

A once-over at the papers and words stick out at me, “First: anger. Everything you said, all that you gave me, all a farce… a Judas Kiss.” … All it gains is silence… “I loved you, and then when I finally believed you, you stabbed me in the back.” …silence. “You disgust me.” I am building courage to finish this paper as these words stab at me.
“Anger is the easiest way to overcome pain, because it blocks all other emotions. My friend once told me, as Gandhi said, “if everyone took an eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind.” Anger, however justified, is wrong.”

These words have never made me shed a tear; I have gone through this before. It is not until later that I feel a tug upon my heart. My eyes are not retreating as I begin to read heavily upon each word, pausing as if there is a great mystery in the sentences that I have yet to find, “Then: regret. This must have been my fault. What did I do, what did I say? What did I not do and say? How did I push you away? I wasn’t here enough. I didn’t listen enough. I wasn’t sensitive enough. I was too possessive.” There goes another tug, and I feel the tightness in my chest begin. “I could never say these hateful things to you, I could never hurt you like that. This is my entire fault, why should I rain on your parade? You’re so young; you don’t deserve the baggage. Why force it on you when I can shoulder it on my own? You should live your life and be happy without me.” I want to grab something, so I cling to the paper closely, as if the center of my gravity lay within this paper, and I had nothing else.  “I had no business letting you love me; all I did was ruin your life. I pulled you away from your friends, I caused you to start failing school, and I made you constantly depressed. It was all so wrong of me.” My heart is pounding as I finish this part, and I feel heat in my face- stifling me, but I steel myself and continue.
“Another friend once told me that, when someone blames himself, he does it because he feels like it prevents other people from blaming him. Am I just in denial?”

I am timing my breathing to keep calm as words continue to flow along the paper at a steady pace. “After that: sadness. No matter whose fault it was that we ended, the fact is that we ended. My body is practically hard-wired now to wake up at 6am, when all I can do is sit awake for hours on end thinking about what’s now lost.” The next few sentences coax my heart to seize within my ribcage, knocking the air from my lungs. “The day before we ended I knew something was terribly wrong. I drank our whole bottle of wine that night in a desperate lunge for sweet unconsciousness but it didn’t work. I had to ransack my room, my computer, and my phone to dispose of anything with thoughts of you attached. All of our pictures and conversations.”  I crouch in the chair at my desk, stunned yet again at these words, which create such sadness within my soul. I could never imagine such heartache within my own. I am barely holding onto the paper now, my fingers having loosened slowly as I read. “The amazing fog machine… the silly plastic handcuffs and love dice… the ridiculous boxers… the empty picture frame. The broken wristband. I still haven’t had the nerve to pull any of it out of the dark corner my closet… I’m afraid it will just hurt more.” I smile at the thoughts of some of these items, the fog machine sitting upon my counter in the kitchen, the boxers in the drawer. I relax for a moment and then glance down to the paper once again. Big Mistake.  “Oh wonderful, our song is playing at the grocery store. The song I used to sing to myself when I wished I could just be with you. The song I used to sing to myself any time I was ever upset and it would always calm me right down. The song that represented everything we had, the song that now represents everything that was torn away.” I can still remember the moments I showed you how to play the song on the guitar. My fingers stroking the strings of my beautiful acoustic, the wooden instrument that filled my heart with joy, gone. My cheeks burn with heat now, my throat tighter than ever, as I know what I’m about to read. “And every time I look down at my wrist, I see your scar.” And the tears begin.
“My mother says it’s normal to mourn.”

I want to scream, I want to do anything but finish this paper. I want to stop looking at this emotional, downward spiral of heartache. I don’t want to read anymore. But I do it. For Him. “Finally, the culmination of it all: anxiety. This horrid pain that I thought would never return. The aching, suffocating tightness in my chest.” As I read these words, my body mimics the words I take in, my tears drenching my skin in hot tears. My stomach in knots.  

“My stomach’s in knots, twisting and kneading. Unending nausea, but there’s nothing left to vomit up. Curled into a fetal position and wishing for oblivion, draining my body dry of tears in hopes of draining away the agony. In bed. On the floor in the school bathroom. In the counselor’s office. At church. In the back of my parents’ minivan. In the break room at work. In the middle of youth group.” I want to hold your head in my lap and whisper sweet words to you as I read this. I want to tell you this will never happen, ever again, and I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through. I want to tell you so much. “Forcing food down my throat (failing) and trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy around those who care. This crippling pain that refuses to abate. This desperate stress that tears me away from everyone else who I love and care about.” I remember these moments, when you were at a weight lighter than myself, which I feared for your life at times. And I still fear for your life at times. Dreams of guns and smoke permeate my nights without you.
“The worst thing I’ve ever felt. I just want it to end.”

My tears have made rivers upon my face, dripping onto my shirt as they part ways with my jaw. These words touch my soul as you have touched my soul, in so many ways. “By definition, “love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8). I am forced between two unbearably painful answers… either you loved me, and for some reason I may never know, it died – or you never really did love me, it was just some sort of desperate attachment and longing for intimacy.” I have known this before, a person saying they love you and truly meaning they love controlling you. A world I knew for over 2 years, twice over. I never let a tear touch the paper I desperately now want to finish. “The single burning truth, the reason for this whirlwind of emotions tearing me down piece by piece, is that you don’t love me and I still love you. How does one fall out of love? I’ve only truly been through one heartbreak before, and there’s only one way I know of to fall out of love; to beat my heart with my mind, over and over and over again, ‘til it finally succumbs.”

“It makes me wish I had a weaker heart. Maybe I couldn’t love as hard or as much, but I wouldn’t hurt as much either when I inevitably have to force myself not to love. That’s what it seems like now, inevitable.” I smile at these words, the tears slowly stopping; I know what the future holds. Oh, how you would laugh at your words now. “I’ve been told that I’m lucky. It ended on “good” terms. I’m smart, mildly attractive, and I’ve got great opportunities ahead of me. I have a loving family and better friends than I deserve. Yet, despite my guilty conscience, it all seems worthless to me. I am a romantic and no matter how hard I try, I live by my heart – not my mind.” I think of our late night conversations in bed, or when you wake me up at 2:00 o’clock in the morning to pray with me and tell me you love me. These just reinforce how wonderfully strong your heart is, and how much I love you. “To know either of two terrible things: either we had something amazing and I caused us to lose it, or it was a lie and we never had it at all. It dulls the rest of the world’s vibrant colors and sends tremors through the rest of my shallower happiness’s.” I pray that I was the one to bring color back to your life, the rainbow into your soul. Before you, I was a stained glass window with no light to illuminate it, then you came along and made me shine brighter than ever before.

“Ah, what I would give for the wonderful ability to fall out of love. To be able to drop you like you seem to have dropped me, to quicken this agonizing process of separation and detachment, to simply stop caring.” I think back to that time, over a year ago. It only took 4 months for him to completely forget her, and a small laugh falls from my throat, loosening it. “My heart is too big for that though, and my heart will forever be my downfall. I’ll be kicked down again and again and again but still I’ll get up and stride forward, searching for the love that makes me so complete. The love that made me so complete once, the love that I so long for again.” I hope this love that I give you, from my heart to yours, is the love you’ve craved for, because it’s the love I’ve pined for, longed for, cried for. “I hate this heart God cursed me with, refusing to let me simply find comfort in anger or even to let me stop caring. Still must I care, still must I worry, and still must I love.” These words tug at my heart, but in a good way at last. I thank God everyday for this Angel, which He has sent to me. An Angel that brings me happiness, love, laughter, and friendship every moment I’m with him. As I read the last sentence, I stand up with the paper in my hands, and walk out of my bedroom, through the dining room and onto my balcony. “There’s only one thing I wish I could have now, but I know I will never have it…

a weaker heart.”

And as I lean out towards the rain, I let the paper slip out of my hands, watching it fall three stories as rain softly pelts it. I hear the front door open moments later, and he walks into the living room. I step off the balcony and into the apartment, smiling at him. He sets his keys down on the counter-top, beside the fog machine, and pulls me towards him with his welcoming arms, kissing my forehead. I hug him tightly, burying my face into his chest, listening to his heart that is beating strong and fast; I lean up to whisper three words.

“I love you,”