No Air
Disclaimer: Twilight and everything related belongs first, and foremost, to Stephenie Meyer, and then to her partnerships with her publisher and film producer and any other affiliations that I am unfamiliar with.
Summary: They say at the most heart-shattering moments of your life, you feel like you are living without air; drowning inside yourself. And now that I have lost Edward, I have known death.
Posted: 08/30/08
Author's Note: To make a long story short: I am typically not one to branch out of the Harry Potter world in fanfiction, but as I was taking my four-hour trip to come home from college, I was reading Twilight for the third time in the last month, full well knowing what was up next for Bella and Edward; and truly thinking about it when the song "No Air" came on my iPod. And now I present you with the results of such a mixture.
Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air
If I should die before I wake
It's 'cause you took my breath away
Losing you is like living in a world with no air
But somehow I'm still alive inside
You took my breath, but I survived
I don't know how, but I don't even care
So how do you expect me to live alone with just me
'Cause my world revolves around you
It's so hard for me to breathe
If you ain't here, I just can't breathe
No air, no air
"No Air" by Jordin Sparks, featuring Chris Brown.
No Air
I was dead.
I knew I was. There was no other explanation for the gasping pain the shattered pieces of my heart felt, second after stabbing-second. How I knew? I couldn't breathe. It was physically impossible for my lungs to flux and intake oxygen; my blood was not pumping, my muscles were not moving.
He left, and I was dead.
And at this point it was particularly difficult to distinguish the events chronologically. They must've happened simultaneously: I must've heard the words ring from the melodic voice, must've seen his perfectly angular lips part in speech only seconds before my life ended. Maybe he knew that the quicker he spoke, the easier it would be for my body to shut down and give up.
Even as oxygen poured into my lungs, granting me one last glance at the empty spot where he once stood, it felt like poison to my body. A momentary poison that subsided as fast as it had come upon me. Edward must have known it would be like this for me. Certainly he loved me. Loved me enough to break my heart in the quickest way, the one that he thought would leave no marks – or at least, no lasting ones.
For once, the perfect God of a man – much, much more than a man, really – was wrong.
Despite his thoughts, despite what he felt to be his best effort to keep me alive, I was dead. I could say and believe this with certainty. So much about me had changed in those few moments; and even months later, it never changed back. I was different now; I was lifeless. And if I survived at all, it was merely in mundane human ways, in ways I needn't control.
For humans, from the dawn of time, breathing was always considered an instinct; something the body knew to do without prompting, something the body thrived on for sustenance… A direct link to life, an instinct I no longer seemed to need. In death, I became like Edward: immortal, impervious to all forms of pain – except one. Except this.
It was uncomfortable not breathing, I realized. Nothing he said ever made quite as much sense to me as this does now. My brain swelled, cancerously; my eyes bulged, still red, still dark and deadened from those few hours after he left. My lungs begged for oxygen, but cringed when they received their desire. There was no way to win; there was no way to go on living. I didn't even want to try to live, then. What did it matter? What was so worthwhile about a life without Edward?
If I wanted, if I could live with such a thing, I would be able to wish I had never loved at all. But I can't. I need him, despite everything. In such a short time, in such an enormous way, he became the entirety of my life; he became the air my lungs so desperately yearn for, so desperately strain for. And now they are left to shrivel, and dissolve; or to discover an alternative way to live.
A way to breathe with no air.
And that's impossible, I know. There is no life without air, just like there is no life without Edward. The two links, though completely different: one true, absolute fact, the other just the melodramatic proclamation from a teenaged-girl, felt just as real, just as certain, just as strong as the other. I knew no one would be able to see that; no one would be able to sincerely agree with my stubborn claims of love.
But I believed. And not once did my belief veer off. I looked in the mirror every day, into the face of a shattered person; an empty shell that lost the best part of her. I peered into the eyes of a girl who was given the world, who was shown true beauty, love, and a companionship that left her breathless; left her lungs heaving for air that was never there.
And now it is in his absence that my lungs quiver.
He became my life, my soul, and everything I have lived for; but more than that, he became my ability to live. Without him I have nothing.
No love, no life, no air.