Let me go to sleep and mellow in my thoughts. Foreign tears sliding down emotionless cheeks. I don't know from where they come. I can feel and I can't, the sting and the zap of a betrayal that wasn't. What was it? I don't know why this bothers me so, why you bother me so. It's like you're leaving and coming back but not really. You just left or perhaps allowed me to drift along.

As my hand absentmindedly caressed my hair, imagining that it was your hair running through my fingers like it once was. What would it feel like to fall asleep with you in my arms again? I would bear the pain of an armrest digging into my back, just to feel the warmth of you pressed against me as you slept. The vehicle's subtle jolts and turns doing little to pull you out of a comfortable daze. It was comfort, assurance, carefree. It was never about sex because sex in itself is a form of boundary.

With us there were no lines or boundaries, simply places we mutually did not go. There were no categories, no rights and wrongs, just the ease in being able to do and say whatever. Holding conversations ranging from the absurd to the profound within the same sentences, it was perfect; I had never been more content in all of my indifferent and resigned years. You breathed a breath into me even if you did not realize it. You moved me to places, in ways, that I was beginning to doubt myself capable of.

But then as quickly as it was it wasn't. It was gone. I wondered if I had imagined feeling anything at all, for the solitary coldness had so easily taken back its home in my chest that I wondered if it ever had truly gone.

Was I okay with what was happening?

The sudden distance that measured and amounted to multiple feet where nothing had fit between before?

Did I imagine those days when people looking for you would come looking first for me and vice versa?

Was this connection we had even real; was it something I super imposed into our relationship?

Did you see it and find it convenient, or did you miss it completely?

I wonder which would be worse.

It's frustrating because I don't know what to do with this anger that I seem to have and not, this burning, stabbing, thrashing numbness that I can't feel or direct. It would be so much easier to be mad at him, the one who started creating the distance in the first place. The one who made what we had inappropriate with a seething jealousy that saw through me even when it seemed you yourself hadn't. I had gone through such strains, jumped through such burning hoops just to 'coincidentally' be bye your side. I had an alibi for every step I took, reason ruling every breath I dared to indulge in, and yet he countered each one with a cowardly smile while he silently snarled and connived.

HE RIPPED US APART!!

……

.....

For that it would be easy to hate, and burn and scorn with anger, but I can't. Simply because the mere fact of the matter was that everything was ultimately your choice. You chose to heed his demands; you chose to let me go. You chose to abandon me and what we may or may not have had. I would love to snarl and snap back,

I found you first!

But no…above all else I felt the need to protect you and the smiles you'd so often give, laughter bringing tears to your eyes…if being with him allows those things than part of what I silently swore to myself includes protecting that relationship with him.

Therefore I cannot be angry at him for the choices you made, or at you for it was also my choice to remain silent.

So in silence I shall continue on.

AN: I was up late the other night ranting and raving and figured Shizuru could probably relate. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy.