“The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost…”

I painted this piece at midnight, with insomnia as my only friend. Whilst embarking on the creative adventure, a scenario played out in my head…all the things she said as she took a drag of her cigarette…a long deep breath filled with nicotine as she finally received the closure she deserved…this is my narrative…

She leaned against the wall… NO! If I’m going to tell this story, I am going to tell it right…

I leaned against the wall, it was me, this story is mine…this time I am the main character, and yes…it happened to me!

Even in a rendition, I feel the urge to enter my confessional with my defensiveness firing! How many times had I been on the receiving end of those very accusations!? They weren’t even accusatory, they were statements! Solid beliefs designed to hurt and stop me in my silly tracks as I recoiled from the sheer mention of me trying to be the focal point of something…leave alone my own life!

How many times have YOU experienced that?? How many times have you done it to someone else? Does it occur that weeks, months and even years later the behavior becomes ingrained into the persons mind! Their character which was probably already pretty humble to begin with is now just an eruption of insecurities and self doubt?!

Standing with her back against the wall, for once a decision rather than a reaction, she put the thin cigarette to her lips…convincing her hand to steady and praying that her breath would follow suite. How was it that even after all this time, the only way to consider the damage that was done was to remove herself from the architecture and assume an entirely 3rd person stance in her own narrative.

Waking up from what felt like a coma, some sort of Sleeping Beauty curse where the entire kingdom had fallen to the ground, that was the only way to view the entrance back into a functional and non-toxic life.

Her decisions, good or bad were now her own! Drinking to numb the pain, knowing she was not an alcoholic, smoking to form a habit other than cutting…knowing that I did not make her any less lady like than doing all the heavy lifting was back in the dark days. Yes! Her dark days! The ones where she forgot everything she had known prior to the breaking down of self!

This was her vessel, her temple to destroy or rebuild and the excuses and ammo her actions so often gave him in order to triangulate his support system, no longer served as a mechanism to validate him and demean her…this was her war cry, and he knew it the moment he turned the corner in time to watch her puff the smoke out her hollow cheeks.

“I see you’ve become a full time smoker now…”

As he paused to do his “I’m going to pretend to take a breath like this just occurred to me then try to act like I wasn’t going to say it but then dramatize how my concern for you is just too powerful and so I just have to be the bad guy and say some horrible things to you that need to be translated into I care”…

She threw the cigarette down clumsily, stomped on it because that’s how they did it in the movies and took a deep breath. “I do believe your judgments have been passed, and whilst I am appreciative of the panels opinion, I do not have the time for a hearing right now”.

The expression on his face betrayed his skillset! He was completely unable to control the rage that shot across his face, his twitching eye revealing his secrets…

How was a man who claimed calm to be his mantra, THAT aggrevated by her shutting down of his annihilation?! Oh right! This was a direct attack on his honor! A character assassination! This was her being all the things he had repeated to her over and over again…

Maybe he was right this time!

“You don’t even know who you are anymore, behavior like that! Your parents would be so disgusted with you”… and there we have it…desperate attack number two coming in hot…she knew that if she did not end it right now, closure would no longer be an option for either of them.

This was her last dramatic and deep breath of the day…this was certainly the last monologue she would be delivering to him ever… and the choice was his…to listen to it or not to…

“Who I am and who i was and who you perceive me to be will forever be irrelevant, not just to you but to the entirety of our once existing relationship. Whatever form I may have taken on, I did not conjure up the power to act or speak for you, that responsibility has always been your own. “

” The last authentic thing I did was love you, it was real, it was so true…it was the most natural thing I ever could have done! So natural in fact, that I HAD to become someone else inorder to convince myself that letting you go was loving you!! No amount of gaslighting, harmful behavior, scary outbursts or hurtful plots from you will convince me that I did not love you, and that I did not love you well enough. I may doubt myself, but the only thing I have ever had certainty of was my love for you.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek, tangling into the single strand of her hair that crossed her eye and lay delicately on the bottom of her face…she could not take another deep breath here, the risk of breathing his allure in again was far too strong…

Instead, she looked up, pursed her lips and gave him the smile that only he had ever seen, it was a smile created by him, it was only fitting that the last look she gave him was the one reserved for him.

He caught her gaze, his own softening as they exchanged an interaction in a realm far from our own…

“Maybe not in this lifetime…maybe in the next” she thought as she walked away…