What do you do when the world is trying to kill you? You kill it back.
My mother told me that having my heart broken would be one of the hardest things I would ever go through.
She was wrong. Having your heart broken is easy. It was as easy as dying had been. You just stand there, and the world crashes down around you. It takes almost no effort at all, but for the effort it takes you to keep breathing. You can't remember breathing being this hard before.
What to do now? You want to fight, to scream and stomp and shake his shoulders. You want to change his mind for him, but you know you can't. You saw it in his eyes. Eyes that used to be open windows, inviting you in, promising, you're safe here. Now? Now they are two bricked-over doors, and even as you wonder how those walls came to be there, you can feel the cement under your own fingernails. Each brick is a time that you forced him to watch as you performed all of your own stunts. But you know that even if you tore down the walls that you helped him to build, brick by brick, that way is closed to you. The locks have already been changed. This house is not your home anymore. If you had known you were only visiting, maybe you wouldn't have unpacked everything that you had.
Do you let him see? Do you let him see the storm that rages inside of you? The one you named after him? Even if you did, he's not looking at you anymore. Do you let him hear the waves as they crash against your body, breaking against your chest as it swells with a song you didn't know you had inside of you? Somehow, you realise, you recognise this melody, and you know these words. You know these words by heart. Maybe you learned them when you were younger, when your mother stopped dressing you in the same clothes as your sister, and your father's eyes darkened when they turned on you. Maybe you learned them when you learned how to build yourself smaller than your father, because taking up too much space only reminded him that you were there.
And if you can't do that, if you can't find it in you to show him that you are drowning and he has stolen the last of the air from your lungs, what then?
When you were five, The Little Mermaid was your favourite movie. When you were older, you swore in all your teenage certainty that you hated that movie. You scoffed, a barb and a hair toss, because what self-respecting woman could love a man so much, she would give up her voice for him? And now look at you, biting your tongue to save him from dipping his toes in the ocean of hurt he has baptised you in. Knowing you would give up so much more than that red-haired siren ever did, if only you could learn to breathe in this windowless room that he has flooded and locked you inside of. You wish you could turn the love into hate, the hurt into anger, the trembling fingers into steady fists, but the ocean never stops longing to kiss the shore, no matter how hard it's waters break against the careless land. No matter how many times it is swept away, it never stops reaching for the sand's embrace. You learned to love him the same way you learned to ride a horse: recklessly, excitedly, never imagining you would ever be thrown.
Having your heart broken is easy. You want to know what's hard? Everything else. Walking, eating, bathing, talking, breathing. Laughter is impossible. It sticks in your throat like all the I love you's you stop yourself from almost saying. It sticks in your throat like every feeling you have to swallow whenever he is near.
Being near him is torture. Yes, you did say torture. Torture is the only word you know to describe missing someone and wishing he would leave at the same time.
Looking at him hurts you. It makes your eyes sting and water like they used to in the springtime whenever you played in the hay fields at Ballantyne's farm. You think you must be allergic to the colour of his hair. You watch him smile at someone who is not you and your throat swells and cracks.
You wonder why you returned from the dead to sleepwalk through this twisted imitation of your life. Your body feels weak and at night you do not sleep, because your bed feels too big for one person and you do not feel safe.
You ask yourself what you are afraid of. Dying? No. Living? You know the answer, and it does not surprise you. You are an empty ache inside of rattled bones, your body is a graveyard and all of the tombstones say the same name. "Rest in peace", but you know neither Rest nor Peace. They are the names of spirits who are now demons, and Lonely and Insomnia wait for you every night. Lonely wields memories like knives, slicing you open, smiling when you cry, and Insomnia is there to rock you in it's arms until the sun rises again to signal the dawn of another day on which he will not love you.
Having your heart broken? It's easy. You know what's hard?
Everything. Everything else.
So what do you do, when the world is trying to kill you?
You kill it back.