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Almost from birth, I've felt this weight, this powerful gravitational pull that invited me to an unwanted and unknown grave. I felt heavy, because this grave was open, and so every part of me tried filling it; some of my parts used to rush out of it, but never, not even once, had I had the doubt that I should stop. I was scared, terrified, but my poor heart kept beating through the tough and frightening times. It never gave out, so I had no other choice but to keep on going with it, keep on living until it took its last pump of blood out of my weary veins.
“The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone;
You don’t need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity.
You just have to love someone.”
Dearest, I've been so ignorant with you. I feel so stupid, thinking about how much time I wasted when I could have been with you. I feel so angry at myself, because you were the only part of my life that made everything around me worth coping with. You were the only thing that got me through the day. Knowing I'd be seeing you in the evenings after doing hundreds of useless things that needed to be done during the day was the only thing that kept me going. I knew you'd be waiting for me in our home, in the house that we had built to let our love grow, to let us grow.
I feel so foolish letting the time pass that way, wasting moments thinking and yearning for you, when I could have spent them actually being and existing with you. I hated everything that kept me away from you. I hated my job, and I hated yours. I hated writing stories about two lovers being together when my own lover wasn't around me. I hated signing books, ‘with love, Carol Sturka’, such a foolish thing to do, when the only person I wanted to actually give love to wasn’t by my side. I hated brushing my teeth without you, I hated waking up alone. I hated it all if it meant not having you for myself all the time. I was so desperate, so hungry for you, nothing was ever enough when it came to you. No touch was enough, no glance, I wanted all of you, I wanted to be consumed by you, I wanted to have you in me, inside of me, and I say that in a nonsexual way, I say it in a desperate human way, I say it with my deep animalistic hunger that is overconsuming, hunger that my body felt since the first day I laid my eyes on you.
Everything I kept resisting before I met you was slowly unraveling as the time passed, and even though I had this gutting hunger in me, I felt like I could finally breathe, I felt like I could take a deep breath, close my tired eyes, and just be. Whenever I was with you, for the first time in my life, I could just let myself exist guilt-free.
Flowers you planted in our garden have known their purpose all their life, eternally reaching for the warm sky, feeling the warmth of the Sun, growing towards the clouds. Their purpose has been decided long ago - spending forever reaching for the light. I found my light halfway through my life, and I've lost it one half later. I could never imagine I'd be jealous of a flower, and I could never imagine I’d be admitting being jealous of a flower, but now that I think about it - it's so hard for people, and especially for people like us, to find that kind of certainty in life, that kind of strong purpose, and spend our whole life aiming to grasp that in our little hands. But with you, dearest Helen, my Helen, I had just started feeling like a little sad flower that had finally straightened its back and started reaching towards the light, I was beginning to feel that certainty with you. Until you left me, until they killed you.
I know you’re gone, and you probably will never be back, but I am a simple mortal being. I can't help it, I still feel myself reaching for you, the only difference now is that I know I have no one at the receiving end. You're gone, and what's left is the ghost of you, hidden amongst the seven billion people, who merge into one and pretend they're you. However, they will never be you, they will never smell like you, they will never fully embody you, they will call me out on my bullshit like you did, if I ever asked for it. Maybe they wouldn’t do that, since they only want to please me. Mental psychos. They gave me a hand grenade. Who in their right mind would do that? Give a grieving woman a damn hand grenade. Whatever.
Anyway, it is so remarkable how exhausting it is to be alive without you. Everything is so desperately painful without you by my side, it all has become so colorless, so empty and worn out. Nothing feels beautiful anymore. Without you, there’s nothing for me here, no one for me to come home to.
"All days are nights to see till I see thee.
And nights bright days when dreams do show me thee."
I dream of you - every night. I crave your touch - every second. I cannot escape my love for you, I cannot escape the emptiness in my chest whenever I think of you, I cannot escape the tears that flow uncontrollably whenever I realize you're gone, forever. It feels like a thousand knives are thrust upon my chest every time I wake after dreaming of you.
I used to love daydreaming about you, it brought me comfort, it brought me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my belly, and it used to calm me whenever I'd go mad. I didn’t say that often, I was way too embarrassed. Jesus, I'm such a joke. Now all thinking about you brings me - is pain, all it brings me are the tears that just won't stop forming at the edges of my eyelids. I don't want to live without you, I don't want to imagine how I'll have to live without you, I desperately grasped onto you so that you wouldn’t leave me, fuck’s sake, I even grasp onto tears that ache to leave me. I guess I try to cage them in myself, I caged you. I didn't want to share you with anyone. I hated, aggressively hated, when someone laid eyes on you, not simply because I was jealous, no, it was something else, something that I still cannot figure out. As for them, they have it all figured out. They say it's because I was scared you'd leave me for someone else, and when it cannot get any worse, she comes to me and tells me I see myself as someone who is easily replaceable. Am I not? If I'm not, then why would you leave me?
I was useless, and my outbursts used to always be so foolish. I don’t know why I acted like such a child. I cannot justify and explain almost anything I’ve done when I was with you. I only said half of what I meant, and only half of what I said made any sense, even to me. I don't understand. How could you get me so well? My childishness makes me wonder now, how much of a burden I must have been to you, how did you even cope with me, Jesus, I could never. I mean, if it were for you, I probably would, but the thing is, I would do anything for you, so there’s that.
I miss you kissing my doubts away, giving me a thousand kisses, until I'd giggle and jokingly push you away, only for you to pull me in harder, and kiss me a thousand times more. I miss your calming aura and your sweet scent, so enchanting it'd make me unable to stop myself from drowning into you. I miss nuzzling into your neckline and inhaling you, having my brain all fuzzy, making me dizzy, forgetting everything - but you.
I miss everything about you, but I hate everything that reminds me of you. I hate drinking, I remember how you’d eye me and then eye my glass of wine, throwing it against the wall with your glance alone, never actually doing it, you’d never do anything to hurt me purposely. I knew that, and I abused that power whenever I could. The only way to win over you was to use your own love against you. I never unlearnt that. But I don’t have anyone to stop me now. It's a win, right?
I’m sorry, I did that to you, I'm sorry for everything I did to you. I hated myself, and I wanted you to hate me. I didn’t see myself deserving of your love. I still don't know how you would fall for someone like me.
I hate bathing, you’re not there with me to annoy me with soap bubbles. I’d tell you to stop, I’d frown and pretend I hated it, but deep down it melted me how much your face would light up when you saw me sulk - your face, full of love, melted my insides. I used to love looking at the stars with you, lying on a soft blanket in our backyard, at midnight, staying up simply to look at a myriad of stars I'd made a home out of. I was always clueless about constellations and anything space-related, but then you’d mention a random fact that would blow my mind, and I would fall for you all over again. Now that I have a human embodiment of an encyclopedia beside me, nothing they say about space astounds me, and I realized it was never about space. It was about you. Now I watch them alone, sometimes with her by my side, and I pretend it’s you who’s with me. The stars don’t sparkle as they used to anymore, but they do double by the blur of my tears. I imagine you’re one of them now. I imagine I'm looking up at you, searching for you in the crowd of a thousand little shiny stars. But every single time I leave without finding you, I just cannot seem to find you, not yet. But one day I will. I’ll get you back.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I should stop questioning stars and I should stop looking for answers in the books. She tells me I have to listen to the teaching that my blood whispers to me, but what do I do when all it whispers to me is your name?
Sometimes when we’re lying in bed, she says she understands my pain. How brutal of her to tell me something like that. How can she possibly ever understand my pain? She probably says that to make me feel better, but the only thing that would make me feel better is you coming back to life, so maybe they can start thinking about arranging that somehow.
No, none of them will ever understand the depth of my grief, none of them will ever understand anything that I'm feeling, and that is probably what’s driving me deeper into my endless sorrow. There’s no one left who can understand what I'm feeling. And even if they ever come close to understanding what I feel, it would never be the same. It’s my grief, it’s my pain, no one gets to understand my pain for you, it’s mine, and mine only.
I used to crave silence, never with you, but I used to crave it after you were gone. I used to crave it so much that it was eating me from the inside. I thought my grief would justify the idea of disconnecting myself from the world, but it had the opposite effect. I did get what I asked for, but I'd never wish for something like that ever again. It made me utterly desperate and hungry for another human near me. I felt like Jesus in the desert, being tormented and tempted by the devil. But unlike Jesus, the devil did win over me. And I did fall under her spell, fell so hard I couldn’t see anything but her. I felt the timeless agony of falling for an idea of a person that exists in your head. She’d look into my eyes, but wouldn’t be able to see past the surface of my pupils. It killed me. But I'd fool myself by thinking she did. It calmed me.
I came to understand that silence is what mankind fears the most. Personally, I used to fear losing you the most, but, sadly, now that title is free - so, the silence has replaced you, now it’s what I fear the most too.
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
Everything regarding her has been done out of pure lust, I can't keep lying to myself. I'm tired of running away from the truth. I've been running away my whole damn life. Maybe it is time to sit down and let it catch up on me, let the truth catch me with its destructive arms, let it embrace me and make me bleed, let it kill me, and after that grace will finally find me.
Our love has never been a product of random reasonings, I did try to make myself believe it was, for a while, I even believed it, but our love was a necessity, it was fate. Ironic of me to talk about fate when I don't believe in anything otherworldly, but it had to happen. You came into my life, you taught me how to love, you were the only person who ever loved me for who I was and never asked me to change, never asked me to be different, you loved all of me, and I loved you with everything I could ever have. I loved you so fully, it's been years since we first met, and I still cannot have a single thought without you creeping from the corner of my mind and smirking at me. Every glance you’d throw at me was a confirmation of affection, a confirmation of love. Every memory I own has you in it. Every single part of my life has you imprinted onto it, and I don't understand how the only way I can remember something is by thinking about you being there with me.
For better or for worse, there's no way I can ever escape the memory of you. For better or for worse, a lot of them hurt me, because I know they will never get additional little memories on top of them, but I call them your memories, they are you, and they all house your face, and to me, that is home, that is where I belong.
You want to know the horrible truth, that excruciatingly heartbreaking truth that I don't even admit to myself yet? I'm starting to forget what you looked like. Yeah, I can't seem to remember my wife's face. Can you imagine how deeply humiliating that is? Your beautiful face, I used to admire so lovingly, ossifies, fades so painfully from my memory that I wish I could die, until I completely forget it. Sometimes I can't seem to remember it at all. And god forbid, I spend too much time without looking at our pictures, I even forget what I look like.
I need a constant reminder of you, so that you don't completely fly away from me. Because it's been a while since you left. But my love for you never subsided. I do still love you, and I do still miss you to death, but I also miss who I was when I was with you. They're both gone now. And I try to grasp onto your memory alone, I can't keep chasing two rabbits at the same time, right? I won't catch either. I've let go of trying to hold onto my past self, who existed with you. Now I try to hold only onto you. When has my love turned into such hopeless love?
“I am afraid. I am not solid but hollow.”
Some days when she hugs me, and sleeps soundly and breathes softly onto my back, I close my eyes, I travel back to the times when you were the one cuddled up next to me. I imagine it’s your hand I'm holding onto for dear life, and on that night I dream of the silliest and softest of dreams of us.
I dream of the sound of your laughter, and I see your beautiful face, an image that’s drenched into all parts of my brain. I see your eyes imprinted deep into my memory, the color I'll never see ever again. And I realize, nothing exists without you in my mind. One drop of you and my whole brain turns the color of you.
The world is pressing down on me, the walls of my existence are being crushed, and I'm afraid. I’m afraid of not believing in anything, because not believing means I'll never ever lay my eyes on you again, not even after I die. It means all I have left of you is the objective, an absolutely optical replica of my beloved face, a little ghost I made up in unnatural colors, a face I'll never caress, lips I'll never kiss, eyes I'll never drown into.
“You are like a merciless dust storm raising above the clarity of my mind.”
I’d say I love you, but where will my words even go, after I say them, into the void? Into the hive? Into space? Or into the fireplace, because this letter will never see the light of the day, or the light of someone else’s eyes. I miss you, I will miss you forever, I will miss you until I see you again, and when I see you, you will not be changed, you’ll be the same Helen, waiting for me in our home that we built to grow old in. You’ll have the same loving look in your eyes, that never failed to make my chest heavy with wonder, what did I do to deserve having you in my life.
What did I do to deserve being loved by you?
I love you, my sweetest.