If Hell were a real place, something tangible and tantalizing and a thousand times more than anything you could imagine, then Hell would probably be modeled after this. It might even be situated here, at this moment in time, on the tips of your fingers as you touch my arm and smile and tell me it will all be okay when we both know it won't.
Considering the past few days, that's a lot to say. The past few weeks, even more. The past few years, though?
I would have been ready to say I have been through Hell, China. I would have gone there in an instant, without any hesitation whatever, because up until now, I believed it. Hell was war and fighting and killing and hurting and watching everything I valued fall apart.
Then it was watching you draw away from me and knowing that something between us had broken and we'd never be quite the same as we were, and it was seeing you falling in love with another, a man who could never hope to deserve you.
At this instant, however, Hell is knowing both how close you are to me and how incredibly, incredibly far.