This was a short story I wrote for a competition. It didn’t get anywhere, but I thought it sounded good.
Have you ever felt pain? I don’t mean the everyday type of pain like when you stub your toe, and it hurts. No, I’m talking about the type of pain that comes from the very core of your being, where it feels like your soul has been torn out of your body, by the person you trusted and loved the most.
Have you ever felt so dead inside because they are gone, and yet you know that you are alive, and you wonder why? It’s an excruciating pain that courses through your body and yet this pain just sits inside of you.
It doesn’t go away, it gnaws at your insides, and yet for some strange reason, you get accustomed to the way it aches. So much so that eventually you feel numb. There’s just a void, a chasm of pain that dwells within, as though it has a life of its own.
No matter how hard you try to block out the pain, you can’t. You just can’t unsee the things you’ve seen, you can’t unhear the things you’ve heard, you can’t unsay the things that have been said, and you can’t undo what has been done.
Sometimes things are beyond your control, and no matter what you do, you can’t ignore what’s going on inside your own brain. It wasn’t meant to be this way. I should never have felt the pain that I am feeling. That wasn’t the way things were meant to happen. What did I do that has caused this pain is that quite simply – I fell in love.
I don’t mean the love that some people have. People can fall in and out of love so quickly, that one could have whiplash trying to keep up with the speed of their relationships. No, I’m talking about the type of love which you know is deep, connected, and true. Where you know that that person is who you are meant to be with, and without them you are dead inside, and become nothing more than a shell of a human.
It wasn’t easy to find happiness again, The idea that happiness could be found seemed absurd to me. Yet I thought I had truly found happiness, and I believed that everything would be all right, for I had lived such a horrendous life, that I thought this was my reward for past abuses.
The gods must be laughing at me and my patheticness, my wallowing in the pain I feel. They must be laughing that I fell for their tricks once again. Only this time it’s different. This time, not only did I absolutely love, but I still do.
Nothing matters because I can feel the pain so deep in my bones, I can physically feel the weight pulling on my heartstrings. My soul was, and is crying out, wanting so bad, what I’ve never known before. And it was right in front of me before the gods snatched it away.
There was something missing from the beginning though. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Now I understand but in the beginning I didn’t understand. Still, how can you understand how I came to be in this place unless you have some idea of my background?
Not that you need all of it, but you do need some of it to understand how I came to be where I was, when I met him. It was a serendipitous moment. I could see it, he even agreed. See, falling in love was the last thing on my mind. It just happened. But why was it the last thing on my mind? Because of my past, because of the violence. But still it was there, that wanting, that longing, that desire for that, which I never had.
I was always different even as a child, I knew I was different because of how I was treated, and as the years went by, it felt like I had drawn the short straw. That somehow, I had invoked the anger of the gods. That I was being punished for the rest of eternity, for a crime I didn’t know I had committed.
The only crime I committed was I was born. That’s when it started, the moment I was born. Maybe I shouldn’t have been born, but then if I wasn’t, what then, or was my birth a part of some sort of cosmic plan?
A part of some cosmic chain that made me who I am. Or perhaps the cosmic plan didn’t need me after all, and so this is how it all worked out in the end. I would be nothing at the end of it all. Or perhaps not the ending – maybe this was a prelude to it all, or an endless loop, with no real beginning, only a never-ending timeline.
Just another cosmic string for the gods to pull on, and make me dance to their tune, yet here I am older and wiser, wondering about my destiny. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Many moons ago, I was born, and from the day I was born, I wasn’t accepted like the others.
For starters, my mother blamed me for her missing out on her tea, then as I grew older it became obvious that I wasn’t like the family. I didn’t lie, cheat, or steal like they did, and that made me a rebel, the outcast in the family.
You know the ones, they don’t fit in, and everyone has this idea of what they should be like, yet they don’t let them find who they are meant to be. And so, you grow up and you’re the family’s favourite kick ball, the scape goat, and you get used to it.
I believed I was the pariah, and my father, you know the one that’s supposed to protect you, he was the worst. He was so abusive that abuse became normal to me.
It’s not meant to be that way, but it became normal, and I thought for some reason the gods, or the universe was punishing me. And I took my childhood into my teenage years, and then into my adult years. And I made a lot of mistakes. I paid for them all, and it cost me dearly, yet all I could see was abuse.
Still, it was considered normal to find a partner, get married, and have kids. But no one ever tells you that maybe that’s not the way for you. I didn’t have a lot of guys in my life, come to think of it, I didn’t have a lot of friends either, but I put that down to I was too weird.
People thought I was weird, hell, even I thought I was weird. I’ll give you an example. When my grandmother died, a few days after her funeral, I saw her. I swear it’s true. I was nine, and I woke up and saw her standing on a bridge.
There was a car parked at the end of the bridge, the back door was open, and there was a man standing there waiting. She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying, I could only see her mouth moving.
The next morning when I told my mother, she said that I must’ve been dreaming, and she asked what she was wearing. I told her ‘a pink hat, and a dark blue coat.’ She didn’t know what to say because that is what they buried her in.
Us kids weren’t allowed to go to the funeral, and we had never seen that coat, or hat, because she had only recently bought them. Years later when we were going through some family photos, I said ‘Oh, that’s the guy who was waiting for grandma.’ My mother told me that that was her father.
So yes, I’m weird, but I knew that there was some sort of spiritual dimension, just not what. Maybe it was the pressure of finding someone, maybe it was the wanting to get out of a toxic, abusive family, but I ended up in a few very wrong relationships. I wanted someone different to my father, someone who was nice to me, and would treat me right. That’s not a lot to ask for, is it? But the gods rolled those dice of destiny, and I got the raw deal.
There were no happy ever afters in my life. The gods, they have a cruel sense of humour in the way that they play with us. We are nothing more than pawns that the gods use to manipulate the world around them, and for their own amusement. Does that sound harsh? But I look at my life, and that’s how I feel, a pawn that’s used by other people for their own enjoyment, or benefit.
Every time I thought things were going to work out, it was like the rug was pulled out from underneath me, leaving me to stumble and fall. Repeatedly I failed, sometimes spectacularly.
Even the guys I went out with turned out to be a colossal failure. They seemed nice enough at first, but then each one of them didn’t work out. One I found out was a prostitute, one was an alcoholic, and the last one because I only went out with a few ended up in Domestic Violence.
I decided that I didn’t need a guy or anyone else for that matter. And I was angry. I was angry at the gods for allowing all this to happen, and yet strangely, I found myself drawn to a church, and it was in that place that I found a sense of peace. And it was in that place that one day, a girl I met asked me if I was interested in getting married. I laughed and said, ‘No way.’
And I meant it, after all, you just have to look at my history to see that I am not good in choosing a good partner. Then she asked if I was looking for a guy, and I said, ‘No way.’
I told her that if there was meant to be a guy in my life, then God needed to connect us, I would need to know, and he would need to pass a police check and an Interpol check. He needed to treat me right, because I deserve that, and he would have to be able to hold a conversation, and love God as much as I do, and then I’d consider going out for a coffee.
And then I forgot about what I had said. I honestly didn’t think that anyone would come into my life. Fast forward a few years later, and I fell in love only this time it was real.
We were so similar, it was as though we were mirror images of each other, and it wasn’t long before we told each other that we loved each other. My feelings were deep, and I have never said I love you to anyone, not even my family, because of the abuse. So, to tell someone that I loved them, meant that I felt very deeply.
We got incredibly close very quickly and we have such a deep connection, very few people would ever have the depth that we have. But I noticed every few months he’d tell me to leave, and I’d tell him I didn’t want to.
Occasionally we’d not talk because he wanted me to leave, but we always came back together. I began to think that maybe just maybe for once the dice was being rolled in my favour because we were so close, and we kept reconnecting.
Then he told me to leave again, and this time he asked me to play serendipity with him, and to trust him on that. Then he said that even if it took years, we block each other’s numbers, and if the universe wants us to be together then when our paths cross again, then we were meant to be together. Let the universe decide.
Begrudgingly I agreed, and we blocked each other’s numbers. And I cried, and the pain ripped through my body. It was a pain that I’ve never known, and I’ve endured some painful times. Nothing can ease that ache, that pain in your body, or to make you feel better, it just is, and it just doesn’t go away.
It felt as though my soul had been ripped out of me, and now I feel so dead on the inside. He doesn’t seem to realise that the universe gave me to him, and he kept throwing me away, and this time he wants another shot. If the universe connects us again then he’ll know.
What will the universe do? What will God, or the gods do? Will they connect us, and say this is your last chance, or will they say, that they’re not going to, because it’s been one chance too many? What is he going to say to his family and friends, because he is going to have to tell them at some point in time? Will I get my happy ever after, or will I be discarded again?
The roll of the dice, or the whim of the gods will decide what will happen. For now, though, I am sitting at my window, staring at the park below. The wind is blowing through the trees, and the rain is falling gently to the ground. I know that one day the tears will stop falling, and I know that one day the pain will stop, but I will never stop loving him.
Sometimes, once in a lifetime you meet someone, and they just complete you. That was him, he completed me. Maybe the reason that I never had guys like me was that they weren’t meant to. Maybe I was created for him and him alone.
I have so many unanswered questions. Was he my true twin flame, or was he a fake? Are we going to reconnect, or are we not? Is he happy, or as sad as me? Does he regret having me block his number? Does he feel the emptiness, and the deadness that I feel? Am I going to have my happy ever after, or continue to feel cursed, and not worthy?
Is this my destiny? I have no answers, and so I sit waiting. Waiting for the roll of the dice from the hands of the gods. Will it be in my favour this time, or not? A rumble of thunder, and lightening cracked overhead, zigzagging to the ground. I look up at the sky and ask ‘Is this a sign, what does it mean? What does anything mean?’
I swallow my coffee and salute the sky. I am not the expert in my destiny, they are, and I wait to see just what the next roll of the dice will bring.
Szars Blog 