7. This Is How I Kill Myself, To Stay Alive

The things we do just to stay alive
The things we do just to keep ourselves alive

City and Colour – Day Old Hate

...

Hours have faded into days, and days into months, distancing myself from the nightmare that was our last conversation. While I've been able to replace my broken phone quite easily, parts of me are still bruised, sore at the way things have played out.

It's easy to brush the feelings aside when work calls and I am well and truly distracted, but it's on quiet, lonesome nights like the present that the feelings resurface and flood me all over again. It takes so much for me not to drown in them, and so I choose to drown myself in other ways.

Hazily eyeing the last bit of whisky in my glass, I pick it up and swirl it around, watching the liquid form a mini whirlpool in its crystal confines. It twists itself into a frenzy before slowly subsiding, easing back into its earlier calm.

It has changed, I think to myself ruefully. It will never be the same. She isn't the same.

There isn't a day that goes by in which I don't think about her. There isn't a time that my heart doesn't hurt when I think about her. My mind is a cruel recording device; latching onto the words that hurt the most, it finds the most perverse joy in replaying them over, and over, and over. It's as if I am not already hurting enough.

Is she even hurting? Sometimes I wonder. Has she moved on like she claimed she has, or is she just hiding behind the same façade of strength that I'd always hidden behind? It never lasts, that façade. All it takes is for a thorn to burst in seconds what had taken years to build up.

I down the remaining whisky in one gulp, and grasp the glass tightly in my left hand. My intoxicated mind starts wandering again. Why is she doing this? Have I kept quiet for too long? Does she not love me anymore? Has she found someone else?

In a slim moment of clarity, I pull out a piece of paper that I carry around with me, close to my heart, in the breast pocket of my shirt. It's been crumpled too many times to count, and its creases are heavily defined from much folding and refolding. In other words, it has definitely seen much better days. This was the same piece of paper, sent out with so much hope, only to have it sent back, filled with words of indifference and hatred.

The paper is held, gingerly and reluctantly, in my right hand. I don't have to do this. I know the contents of her letter all too well, but still I choose to torment myself. Even though my vision is slightly blurred, I unfold the letter with one hand and re-read her words, harsh and biting. I feel a tear trickle down my cheek as I come to the part that hurts me the most:

I have mastered the art of hardening this heart of mine, and it's all thanks to you.

"I just don't know what to do, Ga Eul-yang," I slurred to myself, as the pain in my heart intensifies, "I don't know why you hate me. I don't know if you still love me. I don't want to feel this helpless, this broken. But I don't know who you are anymore."

My grasp weakens and the glass slips from my fingers, shattering against the parquet.

The sound of breaking glass jolts me, and my eyes widen in surprise at the sudden ear-splitting sound. I instinctively put my hands to my ears even though the sound only existed for a second. I close my eyes for a moment, and take a deep breath.

As I re-open my eyes, I realize that I'd dropped the letter I was holding. Reaching downwards, I pick it up and find myself looking the other side of the letter that I've avoided re-reading for months and months. It was my letter to her, my side of the story, words and lines crafted from my love and admiration for her. But she thought of them as empty and meaningless, and coming much too late.

But re-reading what I had written all those months ago made me realize again why I loved her in the first place. And why I still love her. Somehow I want to believe that she is still the Ga Eul that I know: the girl with the purest honesty, the most beautiful soul, someone who believes in me, and someone whom I desperately want and need in my life.

I cannot take this silence any longer, this distance, this… angst. This is not how it's supposed to be. This is not how it's supposed to end. This is not supposed to end.

It will not end like this.

I pick up my cell phone and begin to dial.