by Amanda Day
White Ink On A Black Page…
After just over a month, the mornings got a little better, which was the first good sign. The second was wanting to brush my hair. The day I came downstairs with my hair in a neat braid and a little lip-gloss on, my mum almost cried with joy.
I still thought about you constantly, of course I did. Your words still spun around my head, but they began to get a little quieter. Instead of being desolate, I started to get angry at you. I began to think how dare you? How dare you be silent when I was hurting so much? How dare you think you can welcome me into your arms, change my life and my soul, then drop me. How dare you ignore me like I didn’t matter, when I did. I really, really did.
I’d get myself worked up into an angry tangle. I would sit and stew. Fierce music replaced the melancholy ballads I had filled my ipod with, which let me tell you really, really did not help. It should be a rule that love songs are banned when your heart is broken. What you need is songs about strength and how good life is when it isn’t graced with the presence of an absolute wanker. Getting angry made me feel stronger. In anger, I saw hope.
Inevitably, however, sadness would follow these brief spurts of spark. In these moments of sadness I went back to the crumpled mess that checked her phone with hope, and whose heart sank at how empty and cold it remained. I continued to text you. Not every few days anymore, but perhaps once a week: I still miss you. I wish you were next to me. I wish you would just speak to me.
Of course you continued your hurtful silence. At this point however, I didn’t cry at your absence anymore. Instead I sighed heavily and told myself it wasn’t worth the effort anyway. I was so tired; of knowing you, of loving you, of trying to be without you, that I barely had enough energy to hope for you. I told myself you weren’t worth it and sometimes I believed myself, just a tiny jot in my most angry of moments, but it was progress.
I still loved you, of course I did. I still do. Maybe I always will. But waking with hope that each day could be a better day was such an encouraging feeling that it helped me roll out of bed and carry on. Every night had the promise that tomorrow might be even better. Some mornings I found myself thinking of something other than you. My first thought went to what I was going to wear or what I needed to do for college, then I would catch myself and almost feel guilty for not thinking of you. I had gotten so used to thinking of only you that any other thoughts seemed like imposters. They startled me, which just snapped me back to you as always, then I would smile, because I knew I was getting better. It was slow, but definitely better.
The day I knew I was returning was the day I looked at my paints. The bright colours didn’t make me cringe anymore. They didn’t sing to me quite yet, but they didn’t make me shudder either. I toyed with my drawing pad and the paint box. I turned it over in my hands and wondered if I were to paint, what would I choose?
Then, as if my mind had been reaching out for it all along, my hands went to a pad of black paper and a white ink pen in the top of my pencil case. They were the most appropriate. They were going to be the ones to set my feelings free. No other colours could possibly be right.
I sat for a while, staring at the empty black pad. I think an empty page, like a stranger you have just met, has such potential. It could be anything. You only have to take a chance and make a start to unravel what it contains. You take the first step, a gamble, and wait to see what happens, which is what I did. I uncapped the white pen, smoothed the paper, and started to doodle. Nothing at first; boxes, flowers, houses. Then it turned to words, big curly words, tightly scrawled angry words. Your face. Your eyes. Your bike. Your words. I doodled in white on black and I let the simplicity soothe my soul.
I drew you out of my heart and onto the page.
It felt like breaking a dam and setting all that built up pressure free.
The Letter You Should Never Have Sent…
You sent me a letter. It was a fresh wave of pain exactly when I felt like there might be hope for me after all. I could have lived without it, to be honest. You felt the need, after all that time and silence, to tell me your truths. Well thanks for that. Perfect timing. Just as I’d convinced myself I might make it through without needing to know where we went wrong, and that perhaps it was best not to know, you ripped open the clouds and rained on me more than I ever needed.
Dear Mina,
I’m so sorry. I am sorry I have treated you like I have. I am sorry I let you down so badly and broke your heart. Watching you walk away from me that night in the restaurant, crying and hurt, destroyed a little part of me. I wanted to chase you, I wanted to explain, but I knew if I did I would not be able to let you go again. Staying in my seat was one of the hardest things I have ever done.
I wanted to tell you a few things, things you deserve to know but I never had the balls to tell you to your face.
The most important thing, sweet beautiful Mina, is that I love you. I love you so fucking much it stings inside. I loved you from the moment we spoke. When we were together it was like nothing could be more perfect. No one could be more perfect. I never lied when I said how special you were to me, I just never told you exactly how special.
I don’t just love you because you are beautiful, which you are, I love you because you are fierce and strong. You are clever and bright. Too bright for me. Had we stayed together you would end up knowing me better than I know myself, which scares me. It scares the shit out of me. I struggle to accept that someone has worked their way so far into my heart and soul that they have become a part of me, but you did. And you are still there.
I am a coward, that is what this comes down to. You told me that you loved me and I loved you back, but I didn’t know how to say it. I don’t know how to be the person you want or deserve. So instead of trying, and inevitably failing – which I know I would and I would let you down – I backed out. I took the coward’s way out for sure. I am so sorry for that. I was never bored of you. I never wanted to treat you like that or say half of those things I said to you, but I had to push you away to save you. I had to be horrible to you so that you would walk away and so I would destroy everything between us enough that I would not be tempted to try and get you back. I needed to push you so far that we broke in an unfixable way. I am so sorry that I had to, but it was to save you. You would be miserable with me. I am constantly searching for something, I don’t know what and maybe I never will, but I would be afraid to let you love me too deeply, and love you back the same, in case I still felt I needed to search and have to leave you behind to do it. If I had you, really had you as my own like I wanted, I wouldn’t be able to leave you, then I would be left missing something that I needed to find and it would destroy us both in the end. So I had to do it, to save you and me. I know what you are thinking; perhaps what I was missing was you. I think it might have been, but I couldn’t take that risk. Not with you. That’s part of why I stay with Pan. I know she is not it, this thing I am searching for. Maybe that won’t make sense to you, but I think it will because you know me so well. You see me in a way that no one else does.
You do everything with such passion, Mina. You throw your heart into everything, your big kind heart, and I know you invested part of it in me and I don’t deserve it. I never did. When I said you can’t give 100% of yourself to someone, I meant it. I was hurt, not only by Pan but someone else, a long time ago. I was seventeen and completely in love with a girl. She cheated on me and broke my heart. A few months after, I found out she had been pregnant and had an abortion. She never knew who the father would have been. It destroyed me. This tiny life that could have been part of me, gone forever. You can’t take that kind of thing back. I was devastated. Then I met Pan and just as I started to move on, she ripped my heart out all over again. After that I gave up believing in love. Until you.
I told myself I wasn’t falling for you, but I knew I was lying. I knew I loved you the second I heard your voice. Then I saw your pretty face and your big eyes and I was lost. Utterly gone. We fitted t
ogether like it was meant to be. The further I fell, the more I panicked. Then you told me you loved me and I knew I could never be what you needed or wanted. And I bailed on you.
I was never bored of you, Min. You need to know that. I was trying to save you by letting you go.
I got every one of your texts. Every single one. I read all of them one hundred times. I am so sorry I didn’t answer, I was just trying to do the right thing. I did feel it though, all of it. I missed you and all I wanted was to hear your voice too. Some nights I drove by your house just to see your light on. I just wanted to be close to you again, but I knew I couldn’t.
Mina, I love you. I love you so much it fucking kills me to be without you, but it’s for the best. If we stayed together, if we even gave it a try, I would let you down. I can’t be who you need or deserve. I want you, but you need better.
I hope one day you’ll understand and forgive me. I’ll love you always.
Drew
Your words made me feel sick. Seeing your writing, the letter you had sat down to write to me to make me understand, suffocated me. You loved me. All the hours I had spent wondering, agonising, trying to work out what I did wrong or how I had upset you, and now it was all clear: You were a selfish bastard.
I gave you my soul and you crushed it like a bug.
You coward.
We could have been amazing, but you were too scared to try.
Yes you loved me, it was the thing that I had wanted more than anything else in the world, but it never mattered in the end because reading your letter made me see what a waste of my time you were. I had given you everything. I opened myself up to you and let you crawl inside, giving you a permanent residence in my heart, and you took it, knowing you were going to let me down all along. You intended to let me down the whole time, knowing our relationship, or whatever it was, had an expiration date. You were fully aware you were never going to try to be the person I wanted, that I deserved. You knew you were just waiting for the moment when you had the balls to leave me behind. You were practically waiting for it to go too far, then planned to back out.
I burnt your letter you should know. I burned it because you burnt me, scarring my heart, and I wanted to scorch you back.
I hope it melted some of the ice in your soul.
Splashes of Colour…
After I burned your letter, with my mum holding my hand, over a specially built bonfire in the back garden, my stomach stopped aching. Just like that. I didn’t notice at first. Instead I had a niggling feeling that I was missing something. It took me two days to notice it was gone. I no longer felt sick or wanted to curl up into a little ball.
I was still doodling; white ink on black paper. I still wrote your words and created little scenes around them. I drew the stars and the moon we had lain watching. I drew the lake we walked around. The giant plate of spaghetti we shared. But then I drew a heart, a whole heart, not a broken one. I drew music notes and thought about playing something upbeat. I drew snow covered mountains and fairy lights, thinking about Christmas which was just a month away. I doodled a Christmas tree and wondered what my friends were doing. Whether they wanted to go out. I drew cake and coffee, thinking they might like to catch up.
They did, and they had missed me.
I had missed me too.
Then I took my black paper and my white pen and drove back to our park. I hated it at first. I didn’t want to get out of the car. It was cold and raining, but I put my woolly hat on, grabbed my umbrella, took a breath and forced myself out into the grey November day.
As I walked around the park, my eyes initially avoided the places we had sat or kissed. Then I made them look. I made them stare. I made my mind drink it all in, empty and alone. I won’t lie, it was hard. These were the places I had avoided for two months, in my mind and in person. I stood still and drank it in. All of it. Then I got my white pen and I drew it. All of it. The rain smudged the ink and the wind blew the paper, I had to battle to finish, but I battled and I fought.
And I won.
I burnt those drawings too, just so you know.
When I got home I put my black pad and white pen away.
I was ready for colour again.
One Month Ago…
The Places You Used To Belong…
It took three months for me to not want to text you about every little thing that made me laugh or cry. To be fair, it took me almost three months to laugh again full stop.
By December I had stopped texting you pretty much completely. I still wanted to. I thought of you every day and my fingers itched to send you a few words. I didn’t want to say I missed you or that I loved you, I just wanted to know you were OK. But I didn’t. I managed to stop myself. Instead, I focused on Christmas. I had plans to visit family and see my friends. I made a full itinerary that covered pretty much the entire month because I had figured out that keeping busy was key. It helped keep away those thoughts of you. It stopped your words from spinning around my head. It made me feel almost normal again, and God, that was a beautiful feeling. I knew I wasn’t quite there, but only being twenty or thirty percent present was still a welcome relief. I wasn’t crazy after all. It was amazing.
I often thought back a few months, to when I was at the bottom of a black hole, certain I was never going to feel better. I was positive that feeling of being pulled down and down and down was never going to end. Eventually I would just collapse under the weight of gravity and misery and crumble to dust.
But I didn’t. It surprised me. I surprised me.
Sometimes my heart caught me unaware and I was hit by such a wave of longing and loneliness that I could have suffocated. But I carried on, trying to leave you behind.
I still saw things all the time I wanted to tell you about. I still thought of things that you would find funny and I started towards my phone, thinking maybe you would be happy to hear from me and hear all about it, but then I would remember how far I had come and knew I didn’t want to go back. I knew any contact from you would have done it. I knew a single word from you, in person or on my phone screen, would have sent me tumbling back weeks of progress.
My friends were amazing. I had finally come clean about where I had been and what had been happening. My phone had started to buzz and beep all the time, them checking in on me and saving me from my thoughts. I don’t know where I would be without them. You still had your own alerts, just in case. We had a plan, my friends and I, that if your alerts were ever to sound I was to contact them immediately. I was not to be left alone with any contact with you. It was a good plan. It made me feel safe because I knew I was weak when it came to you. Maybe I always will be.
December passed in a blur of tinsel and learning to live again.
I gave my family and friends all paintings for Christmas. They were bright watercolours, using all the colours of the rainbow. I did it because I could. Those colours no longer made me hurt. I wanted them in my world again. Bright beautiful colour.
On Christmas Day I gave myself a present; I deleted all the texts I had saved from you, and I finally gave up that tiny last flicker of hope that we could go back to what we had once been.
I also finally deleted your number.
Merry Christmas me.
Today…
You Look An Awful Lot Like Hope…
I saw you today. You were in the indoor market, looking at cakes, and you were with her. Pan I suppose. Although maybe not. I might never know. Your arm, which used to belong around my waist, was around her shoulders. Whoever she was, she was beautiful, as I might have expected. You said something to her, right up close to her ear, and she threw her head back to laugh. I watched her blonde hair swish over her shoulders and across the skin on your forearm, the same skin that I used to run my fingertips across. You made her pretty skin flush. Your blue eyes sparkled and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I was better though, better than before. Better than when I thought life without you meant nothing. Better than when I thought I w
ould never feel like myself again. Because I do. Finally.
That was why I was there. It is the New Year and I needed new paints. It is something I do every January. I renew my art supplies for the year and get excited about what I will create with them.
I made a New Year Resolution you know. It was to leave you behind once and for all. You had taken six months of my life and that was more than enough. I knew I need to start afresh, and when better a time than a whole new year? It was a bit cruel of life I suppose, seeing you so soon. Testing me. But life is unexpected like that, and we just have to face what it presents the best we can.
I watched you for a moment longer, watching you together and wondering if that was how we looked to an outsider; happy, close. In love. I looked at your smile and my heart twisted in knots. I thought for a minute I might collapse. I felt hot and faint. But it passed.
It was then I nodded to myself, because I knew it was time. Enough was enough.
I turned my back on you and went to the till, unloading my armfuls of paint and paper and clay. I didn’t really pay attention to the guy behind the till because I was trying so hard to keep my mind free of you, consciously emptying my thoughts of what I had seen.
“Got a big project on the go?” the guy asked.
It snapped me to and I was grateful for the distraction.
“Sorry?”
He gestured to my stuff. “All this. You must be working on something big.”
“Oh.” I looked at my things. They were perhaps a bit excessive, but I was excited about starting over, as one should always be.
