Like We Never Loved At All…
Author's Note: Okay no one is reviewing at this point, very few are reading…but I'm moved by my inner muse to write more so I will keep it up until someone throws something at me to stop….& if you are reading, I'm grateful and I really hope you enjoy this.
Disclaimer: Not Mine.
I want this to look easy. I want my new life to look real. I don't want questions about my new "love", my old love, whether I even can love, or anything. And I definitely don't want anyone to ask if I miss you. So I've shut it all up, doll. Locked it away in the closet of zen, hoping I'll forget where the key is, and eventually, that it's even there.
I think maybe that's just my way of dealing with the pain.
If I let myself, doll, I really do feel bad when you look so wounded after a burn. I tell the room how pathetic and lonely you are. Your eyes well up, you look down at your soft little hands that I ache for sometimes, and no one even thinks maybe I'm the one who's lonely. I pretend I'm not pathetic. And so that's what they see. It's a façade, which I hate. But I need it now that I can't need you.
Maybe that's just my way of dealing with the pain.
Some time's they ask questions anyway. Donna wonders if I hate you as much as it looks like. And by wondering she's saying I don't. She's right of course, I don't hate you at all. I couldn't. But I can't let her know that. I can't let her unmask anything. So I explain you were temporary insanity and that I'm better now. Or that maybe it isn't that I hate you, that I just hate the obnoxious ringing in my ears you cause. Either way she drops it, and in my head I mumble an invisible, silent apology…for lying to one of my closest friends. I've learned to deny, deny, deny. And when it's possible, to evade, evade, evade.
And I'm pretty sure that's just my way of dealing with the pain.
The pain of losing you. The pain I had never expected to feel in this life. And certainly not over you.
But I do feel it.
All the time.
So you probably think I've forgotten, and I have to believe, doll, that it's better that way. I have to believe that pushing out of reach the way you whispered, "Steven," before cuddling closer against my chest, and the way you used to bite your lip when you wanted me to kiss you, is the right thing to do. I have to keep pushing all the little things away from my mind so that I don't have to feel their loss each day. I have to be cool. Stoic. Apathetic. I've got to be Hyde; Steven's gone with whatever was left of us.
And I'm sorry, doll. I am, but it's just my way of dealing with the pain…acting like we never loved at all.
