Fearful Heart
I’m scared of falling in love. I’m scared of falling so deeply that I won’t be able to get up as easily as before. I’m scared of falling out of love. But most of all, I’m scared that the one I love would fall out of love with me. There we were, sitting beside each other and I was feeling strangely empty, as though I had somehow managed to remove from my being all the disappointment and bitterness that I had been feeling for the past few weeks. All the jumpy, excited emotions that I used to have when we were together had gone too. I was just numb. He fiddled with the car radio but it wouldn’t work and I was glad because I never appreciated his brand of music. I thought maybe we could talk and knew that I had to make the first step because he was always keeping his feelings all locked up and hidden from view. “We don’t love each other anymore,” I whispered. I was surprised by the lightning streak of pain that coursed through my body as I said that. I had not meant to say it, had not thought of it, but there it was. We both heard it, my hands were starting to shake, and we both knew that if that wasn’t the truth, then it was damn close to being it. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He wore the same bored expression that he had been wearing for the past months and he continued fiddling with the car radio as though to support my statement by his show of indifference. “I mean,” I continued, determined to find out where we stood even though I was so afraid, judging from the way my voice quivered. “I just don’t feel like you’re here with me. You’re here, but it feels like you want to be somewhere else.” He looked at me and for a moment he looked like he was about to say something. Then he shook his head as though to clear it. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He had on a closed, shut-off expression on his face and for the first time, I didn’t know how to reach him even though I wanted to so badly. “We were happy, right?” My voice was urgent, pathetic and the words finally broke the dam of tears that I had been holding back. I cried for the precious moments, the happy memories that we made together. In my mind, I saw him when I first met him. I saw him looking at me in that special way and I saw him holding my hand while I was asleep. I saw us laughing and I saw us kissing. I saw us fighting and then making up. His reply to my question was to swallow me in a tight hug and I held on to him as though he would be able to save me from misery. “We’re happy, we’re happy,” he repeated over and over in my ear, never releasing me from his tight embrace. We broke up the next morning.