He said that there were lessons to be learnt. all the time, passing by me, touching, reaching for my hand. He said that I didn't look hard enough, didn't use my eyes. He was wrong, I noticed everything, I just didn't learn it. This is what I should have learnt; about love, about Sherlock and about myself.
Love is like having a hole in your heart. I don't mean a metaphorical gap that only another person's touch can close. No. I mean a huge fucking hole, split, broken arteries, a gap as wide as your fist, one side filling up with blood, pulsing, draining, fatigue, shortness of breath, eventual death. Love is like having a fucking hole in your heart. I'm a doctor and I know how broken hearts look, how broken hearts feel, how hard they are to mend.
Love doesn't give a fuck if you think something is 'good' or 'bad'. Good and bad are meaningless to love. You can wake up one day and everything is touched by sunlight. Your body is your own. There are dead leaves on the ground and puddles of water, but no matter because those dead leaves crunch and that water is for jumping in, for getting your battered, melted, drip dyed Converse soaking wet, a decade old and full of holes, water seeping into your socks, cool, refreshing, warming at the touch of your skin. Tomorrow, that sunlight is trapped in a glass jar and hidden for you to find to search for aimlessly, hopelessly, directionless. Your body belongs to them. Your arms don't work properly. Your tongue is heavy in your mouth. The stop of your skull itches as if your brain is too big for it. Those leaves conceal dead rats. Those puddles are deeper than they seem to be and soak you to the skin. Love doesn't give a fuck if today is a good day, if this is a good situation, or a familiar place, or your home. It has completely control over your tomorrow. You better treat Love right. It owns you.
There are many things I should have learnt about Sherlock, most of them came too late. He too knew how it felt to literally have your heart ripped open, and I thought that would be enough. I thought he would channel that somehow into our relationship, into me. That he would become kinder, and softer around the edges. He was not a cruel man but he was never kind. He was sharp and if you sat too close to the wrong bit you'd get spiked and it would hurt. I should have learnt that Sherlock would see no correlation between his gunshot wound and us. That to him hearts would only ever be literal, and my heart was definitely not, literally, sick. I wasn't coughing up blood, although I was bleeding all over the floor.
I'm being harsh on myself; it's an easy trap to fall into knowing how things end. It's unfair to say Sherlock taught me nothing. I learnt how to read John, to look at his shoes and the folds in his shirts. One night, he came over to the flat straight from the pub and Sherlock prompted me to read what beer he'd drunk. Actually, I didn't need his help, John had spilt a bit on his cuff and I walked past and sniffed it. I'm a pathologist; a good sense of smell is necessary.
He taught me how to fit the edges of my body into the edges of his. Lying awake at night, most nights, whilst I slept, I could feel the curve of his hips peak away from his thigh and in the gap between them I fitted perfectly. At first, my breathing was heavy and erratic, but in time I learnt how to slow it and mould it into his. Slow, deliberate breaths. In. Out. In. He never joked about my nervousness and I was grateful. It was one of the kindest things he ever did for me and as I've said, kindness didn't come easily to him.
I should have learnt this sooner but I was slow, and I paid for it. I paid with frantic evenings pacing, not knowing where he was, and eventually I didn't know who he was. He was whoever he was after at the time, he absorbed people into his being, their reality became his. His world, the world where I sat, nursing cold cups of tea, didn't exist anymore. I slipped away as if I was nothing but a whisper, and yet I was yelling, my throat scraping, fighting with words he couldn't hear. I learnt how it felt to be invisible. Not overlooked, not marginalised, but invisible.
You're probably wondering how Mary's doing, whether she's going through the same thing, how she handles it. How she feels. But if I learnt nothing else from Sherlock, I definitely learnt to be selfish. To not care about other people's feelings anymore. To not imagine other people's pain. I used to fear it, fear hurting people, fear causing other people's pain. I've changed. He has changed me. I am no longer a kind woman. I am a scientist. I pull apart what has already been destroyed. I burn what has already been burnt. I kill who have already been killed.
I noticed me fade, bit by bit as he pulled away from me I pulled away from the world, I pulled away from myself. There is a medical term for this schism, this separation. I remember reading about it in medical school on my psych rotation and it fascinated me back then. How can one simply remove themselves from their surroundings like that? How can people forget themselves, lose all concept of time, see the world pass as if they are not a part of it. I never thought I'd be able to do it. I never thought anyone could push me to do it. But Sherlock did. With his murders and handshakes with criminals. With the body parts in the kitchen. With the opium smoke in the bedroom whilst I was working late. Sherlock taught me how to dissociate from the world around me. To become surreal. Unreal. Do I exist? Is Molly Hooper real? Is Sherlock real?
I should have learnt more about myself, before I lost myself.