Consequences of 'I Love You'
The pain is still fresh. Like the wound was inflicted only yesterday. Pain that clenches tight in my chest, holding my heart and lungs in a constricting grip. I know this pain all too well.
But I have lived with this pain for longer than a day; longer than two, longer than a week, longer than a month.
Three years, it's been.
Three whole years. One thousand ninety-eight days. Twenty-six thousand two-hundred eighty hours. One million five-hundred seventy-six thousand eight-hundred minutes. But it's all the same. They all add up to forever.
To me, anyway.
Not to him. He still goes on with his life – smiling and laughing. Like to him, our relationship never happened. Almost as if we never met. Sometimes, I wonder if the late-night rendezvous and trysts really occurred at all or if they were just the products of an over-active imagination set on hyperdrive.
But, I realize, it couldn't have been a dream or a figment of my imagination. Only reality causes this type of pain. This pain that makes it hard for me to breathe, but a pain he will never feel – his breaths come so easy. Just as easily as his heart beats beneath his chest.
Three months, two weeks, and four days ago, I ran into him on the street. Literally ran into him. The first physical contact we had had since. . .that day. He looked at me, his face an unreadable mask. Eyes devoid of emotion.
It took him all of two seconds to right himself and continue on in the direction in which he had been headed. And he never looked back. If he had, he would've seen me, still standing there.
After what we had and everything we shared, for him to treat me like nothing. Perhaps that is the cause of this pain. Perhaps it's only one of many factors.
I opened up to him in a way that I never had before. To anyone. Ever.
Told him things no one else knows. And things for only him to hear.
When he doesn't acknowledge me or my presence, it seems to me as though anything I told him never mattered. What we had was insignificant – didn't mean anything.
And the last three years didn't effect him at all.
I never thought saying the words 'I love you' to someone could be the source of insurmountable anguish and torment.
fin