un.

This body of mine, it’s not mine. I feel removed from it.

My spirit has been spent for a long time now. I don’t remember the last time I felt love. Or fear. Or anger. Or hate. And to think that I was once filled with so much unbridled rage.

I’m trying to think hard and to remember when last I felt anything. Perhaps the day I found out I’d passed my final exam or the day before when my flatmates and I attempted to drown our crippling dread in heroin and molly and Jessica’s makeshift ecstasy. I had not slept for more than an hour and a half in three consecutive weeks. And then there I was with hollow eyes, sugar saturating my veins, a cigarette dangling loosely from in-between my bloodied lips, being told via mail that congratulations, “you’re a doctor”.

deux.

I wish I could say that I don’t know who I am. I do, there’s just a million varying versions of it.

I think I remember feeling alive once. Way before Ezra. And some time after Ezra. When she broke my heart. After she made a final decision to leave me. After her final decision fueled me to finalise my own decision to leave her. The breakup text had been simple, easy to understand, but very difficult to digest. She didn’t give me a reason. She only said she was done. Said she was tired. Said she was just tired. Of me. Of everything.

I recall looking up from my Kumar&Clarke, heart fracturing under pressure, and staring at her stone cold message for minutes with trembling fingers.

I remember initially thinking of many things, many ways to thaw her heart back to life before it became utterly unreachable. And then after an hour of arranging and rearranging in my head all the ways I could turn the narrative around, I settled on begging. She loved it when I begged.  I remember thinking I’d go on my knees if she wanted - sell my pride as an insignificant price to pay for her re-acceptance, even if she’d continue serving that to me in tiny fragments.

I was in the middle of composing my mea culpa when her face popped up on my screen. I had been too stunned to receive the call the first time, so she’d rang again.

“Ezra,” I’d said then, nearly breathless.

“Don’t hurt yourself because of me, Ollie. It’s not worth it. Seriously. That’s all I called to say.” She’d said simply, her once endearing French accent now stiff, clear, conclusive.

That had been my cue to start begging. To re-paint to her once again all the ways she was better than I was, how I’d stop asking for more, how I’d be content, how I was aware of how irredeemably flawed I was, how lucky I was that she had chosen me, how undeserving I was of her redemption and her love.

But I did not. Could not. No matter how much I’d wanted to.

Instead, I’d said alright, ended the call and unfollowed her and a ton of mutual accounts on IG and Twitter. Deleted her number. Resaved her number. Deleted her number again and finally shut her out. Shut everyone out. 

She was wrong, I’d said to myself. I would no longer bleed out for someone who had not once bled out for me.

In the days that followed I plunged myself into a world of poetry and fiction and lies and controversy. Sat on the floor of the balcony of the third floor, listened to Lana, gobbled Dostoevsky, lit mango flavored candles, drenched my sorrows in booze and allowed the mountain breeze cuddle my drab and colorless face. I even read the Bible once, in my affliction returned to a God I had long forsaken.

And then months and months of anguish later I remember feeling what I initially mistook for happiness, and then later described as just peace – silence, less of the real world’s chaos.

trois.

I saw Abi today. She looked pretty. What first stood out about Abi to me was not just her beauty. It was in everything that she was, in everything that she is. She seemed unshaken, calm, just right. Like she was always just at the right place at the right time. I recall the first time I came to this hospital with the Commander’s car and his convoy to submit my placement letter. I looked tired, and for someone with five domestic helps at her disposal, I believe it was more of my emotional and mental fatigue finally manifesting on the outside. Walking next to Abi as she showed me around I was like a lifeless wallflower wilting unceremoniously into the bleak background. And she, well she was Abi, like Ezra – gorgeous, no, not gorgeous, otherworldly, like something to just observe in awed silence, but never touch. Today, she seemed happy to see me, said I didn’t look well, and said she’d come visit to talk when she got the time. Sometimes I think that perhaps if I had met Abi before Ezra and not the other way around, I wouldn’t be as wounded, as distorted.

quatre.

My Mom came to see me yesterday. I had missed her, but the entire situation felt foreign. I felt detached. Uninvolved. Like I was some random bystander observing a bubbly mother interact with her otherwise dead child. Same thing I felt when she came to visit last Christmas. I knew she was my Mom, I knew I loved her, I knew I’d always love her, but I felt removed still. Like I was there, but not really. Like I could hear everyone around me and talk to everyone around me, but not really.

It’s the same when I talk to my colleagues at work. I think my colleagues are all interesting in their own interesting ways. I don’t know if I’ll miss them, though.

I don’t remember the last time I missed people.

cinq.

I think Ezra did more than break my heart. I think she shattered me. Crushed my being and replaced whatever was left of that with fiberglass walls. It’s one thing being hurt by someone you love, it’s another being hurt by someone who loved you first. People say love is a choice. Same people say suffering is also a choice. My love of Ezra might have been my choice, but my suffering was not. Heartstrings. I did not really have a say in the matter.

six.

Sometimes I think my feelings are scorched and burnt. Dried up like my tears. I feel I have exhausted all my emotions. Like I’ve loved enough, been sad enough, been angry enough. For someone so young, I am too depleted.

sept.

I don’t know if I’m a good person. Knowing I’m a good person means knowing what I am. I remember what I told myself after leaving social media. I said I’d remind myself of myself over and over till the truth became entirely mine. My name is Olive. I’m twenty-four years of age. I’m not broken, I’m not broken, I’m not broken. It worked for some two chants and a half and then it did not. And then all I could see was her perfect face and her perfect life. Then I remembered how unlike me, she was so much easier to love.

huit.

I tore my waist beads tonight. It’s something I had been planning on doing. Thing is I always kind of knew the first person I’d have sex with would be someone I disliked. I probably manifested it. Like I manifested her love. Growing up in such a conservative country (or at least one that pretends to be), it was my own way of demystifying the act. If I had sex with an asshole, then I would not be able to say I gave my ‘all’ to a guy or a girl in this case and he/she broke my trust. The whole act would be nothing, and it would mean nothing.

I had a plan, and I was pretty sure it was a good one. My first time did not make sense. What happened afterwards made even less sense. Her name was France. And it’s not like she wasn’t an asshole prior to us fucking, it’s that she made my first time worse than the worse I’d imagined. It was quick, powered by spicy hotel dinner, expensive alcohol and my thirst for vengeance on a horrible ex-girlfriend. Rid of any kind of sensuality or proper emotion. One moment she was hot on top of me, burrowing her knife-sharp eyes into my dead ones, taking without remorse the one thing Ezra had not taken, and the next minute I was alone. No thank you, no after care, no sorry, no goodbye.

My second time wasn’t any different. This time I initiated things myself. I still don’t really know why I did it. It was unnecessary. And it wasn’t necessarily pleasurable if I’m being honest, it was just … sex. I was removed from the situation. I tried to feel emotions, but I couldn’t. I wish I could say she too took advantage of me. Of my grief. Maybe that would have made some sort of clinical sense, but she didn’t. If anything, I took advantage of her.

neuf.

I think much of my suffering stems from the fact that I’ve not fully grasped the unpredictable nature of this world and its humans. And what makes me suffer more is my unrelenting determination to steer that unpredictability in my favor. People can decide to not love you anymore. Because they simply do not wish to love you anymore. Flaws and all.

dix.

I see people in relationships I describe as nice.  Or at least what seems tolerable to the outside world. I saw Kiifi’s engagement photos on IG today. I tried to picture myself in her place but I could not.