How Can You ‘Still Love Me’ When You Hurt Me Like This?

“Do you know how much I love you?” he said to me on that rainy day. The weather was weird that day. The rain was falling lightly at first, and it picked up speed and then it ceased to exist completely until the cycle started over again. Kind of like us.

His car was packed up, his eyes were rimmed red. Time was standing still and ticking so fast at the same time. I wanted time to stop forever and I wanted to fast forward to a time when the pain would be gone. Everything about my life was a paradox. “But we weren’t in a place for going forward.”

“I love you.” I said. There was nothing else I could say but everything. I looked at him, his beautiful hair. His golden green eyes. When you are about to lose someone you love, you drink in their every moment, you try to solidify a picture of him in your mind because you know in just a few minutes, they will drive away and you will be left with nothing but memories.

“I love you too. I am sorry for hurting you.”

Hurting me? I thought his love would always protect me from hurt. But his love was the reason why I was hurting. He wasn’t hurting me, he was destroying me. My body, my heart, my brain no longer felt connected to each other. Instead, they were floating out in pain grasping at anything that would make me feel better.

“Go.” I kissed him goodbye on the lips and ran out of the car, into the rain and into my house. I watched his car pull away from the kitchen window. I looked the spot where his car was parked, praying and hoping that he would turn his car around and make a big proclamation about his love like in the movies and he would stay with me and we would be happy forever. I stood at the kitchen window for a very long time.

The rain stopped.