Love Broken

The rain poured and a grave silence occupied the space. I wondered how much time had passed since I’ve been here, standing still with an emotionless stare as the waters soaked all attire. That all changed in a moment’s notice. Everything rushed to the surface, and I lacked the strength to bare it all. Tears left my eyes, and my cries were drowned out by the downpour. She broke me, and I’m afraid there’s no hope of being pieced back together.

“I love you, Amanda,” I expressed in between cries. Everything played over in my mind in search of answers. I thought we connected on a level incapable of dismantling, but I was wrong, and I learned my lesson hard.

Four years ago, I entered my twenty fifth year of life and decided to celebrate it with some friends I’ve connected with over the years by the pier. It was a group of six, and we were all drunk before we got there.

“Happy birthday Thomas, you old fuck!” Peter sung drunkenly, while dancing on the pier. The entire group sang this remixed version of the birthday song creating quite the scene on the pier. Peter was a friend of mine from college, and I’ve never seen him sober for more than twenty-four hours. Normally when we hung out trouble was sure to happen, but just this once he did something right. Peter stuck birthday candles into twenty-five bottles of various types of alcohol each, while the group continued to sing. After singing, the group cheered me on as I blew out the candles.

“Why didn’t I get an invite to the birthday party?” A young woman with a group said in passing.

“You’re welcome to join the party babe. There’s always room for more at our party,” Peter responded to the mystery woman and her group.

“Sure, we’re up for it. Is that alright with you birthday boy?” she asked while turning in my direction.

“Y-yeah,” I replied nervously.

“Awesome,” the young woman responded while closing the distance between us. “I’m Amanda, and happy birthday,” she hugged me while saying.

I didn’t expect an embrace from a stranger to feel so warm. I smiled and returned her gesture.

“I’m Thomas, and it’s nice to meet you Amanda,” I lost control of my breathing as I stared at her. It felt like lightning struck out of nowhere, and the adrenaline rush jump started my heart. Amanda and friends joined in on our festivities. The night was filled with pure laughter, more singing, drinking and an unexpected romance bloomed. Amanda and I got to know each other in between all the madness. I learned that she was a high school teacher who was an adrenaline junkie, so she loved going mountain climbing, surfing in supposedly shark infested waters, and other extreme types of adventures. She fit right in with Peter and everyone else. I on the other hand was a lecturer at prestigious university who loved drinking on Friday nights, drove a Toyota Corolla like an F1 racer and smoked weed every now and again. That’s as exciting as my life gets. The conversations got deeper throughout the night. We spoke about growing up, past relationships, and big fucks up in life so far. Conversations began turning into small moments of touches being exchanged, until they became frequent and intense. Amanda and I no longer exchanged words, instead we spoke in another way. We’d gotten to know each other well enough at that point where words weren’t necessary anymore. We snuck off from the group somewhere discreet and shared the most intimate exchange right there in the open. We didn’t care though.

That night started it all. For the first year of our relationship, we were inseparable. We went everywhere and anywhere together, creating memories, sharing passionate moments along with intimate ones. It all felt perfect, but looking back there were cracks in our relationship that I looked over because of this perspective of perfection. Six months in, we had our first real argument that exposed the worse parts of us. In hindsight, I wonder if were actually truly good for each other. Peter had invited us to a new night club with a girl he was dating at the time, so we obliged. The night initially went smoothly. We got there around 8PM, and we were in fifteen minutes later; thanks to Peters connections with the owners. Now, drinking was a hobby of mine, which I’ll admit wasn’t the healthiest of hobby out there, however it helps me to cope with all the bullshit I built up in my head over the years. I had it under control though. Amanda on the other hand, she believed in going hard most times with everything. We met Peter and his date by the bar.

“This is Kamaya,” Peter introduced us.

“It’s nice meeting you Kamaya. Let’s enjoy ourselves tonight,” I greeted the young woman.

“It’s great meeting you Thomas, Peter has told me a lot about you,” she said while placing the palm of her right hand on my left shoulder. Amanda immediately stepped from behind me to in front of me while using her body to push Kamaya’s extended hand off me.

“It’s great meeting you Kamaya,” Amanda said in an almost condescending manner. “You’re so pretty. Peter found quite the looker.”

While she was complimenting her, there was sense of ingenuine tonality being displayed. She continued to speak with Kamaya in that manner for the remainder of the time at the bar. Peter was pissed off. I decided to take her away from the bar for a moment to get to the bottom of what was going on.

“What’s wrong Amanda?” I asked concerned about her behavior.

“What do you mean?” she replied. “Nothing’s wrong.”

I began getting pissed off. “You’ve been acting like brat since Peter introduced us to Kamaya,” I expressed angrily.

“Why the fuck did she put her hands on you?” she retorted.

“Seriously, that’s what made you start acting out?” I asked in shock. “She was just being friend.”

“Too fucking friendly,” she said under her breath.

We went back and forth for a while, even causing a minor scene in the club. I felt the eyes staring through me as we argued. The judgement felt made me anxious. I thought to myself about how childish she was being. I knew she was the jealous type due to a few minor instances from previous interactions, but not to this extent. What solidified it for me was when she made the craziest statement.

“I’m only going to say this one-time Thomas. You’re mine, and no other woman can have you. I will fuck you up.

Yeah, she’s crazy. That’s what I thought in that moment, however, my body moved on its own and grabbed her. We shared the most intimate kiss we’ve ever had since being together. The idea of being wanted at such an extreme level created an attachment to Amanda, a very strong one. You see, growing up I’ve never felt wanted by family or friends. As I grew older, I learned to fill that gap inside with things like drinking. Amanda filled it now and more but looking back at everything perhaps that’s one of the reasons she was able to break me. That night brought us closer and revealed more about each other than we realized at the time.

A year and a half in we started living together. It was a new experience for me. I’ve lived on my own since I was eighteen and now that was about to change. A month after living together I learned that Amanda was a slob. Whenever she came home, she would undress at the door and leave all her clothes right there. She got in the bath, took a shower and the clothes remained. She did the same with the plates she ate from. I found myself playing the role of a part time made cleaning up after a twenty-five-year-old woman. Whenever I brought her bad habits to her attention, she would either ignore me, complain or try to seduce me to shut me up. I didn’t understand why she found it so hard to clean up after herself and to listen to what I had to say. I decided to have a sit down with her.

“Amanda,” I began in a serious tone, and with a stern look on my face while we sat on the couch. “You’re very disorganized and it makes it very difficult for me to keep the house in order. If we’re going to have a great living situation we have to work as a team.”

“You’re so sexy with that serious look on your face,” she playfully responded while rubbing my right shoulder.

I shook her hand off my shoulder. “I’m being serious. We’ve got to do something about these bad habits,” I continued.

“You’re always trying to be serious,” she replied. “Let’s have fun with each other.”

“I don’t want to have fun. I’m trying to talk!” I shouted.

“Fuck you, Thomas!” she responded. “Don’t raise your voice at me like I’m your child.”

I went silent. The experience of talking with Amanda reminded me of how I would try to reprimand my younger sister. A brick wall was easier to talk to. It seemed like we could never truly have a conversation. She used the same tactics over and over to avoid it. I continued to clean up after her while deep down I developed contempt towards her. Even though she was a brat, the passion between us stayed alive and kept me hooked to her. That was until it died; well, at least it did for her.

“I’m bored, Thomas.” Those were the words Amanda expressed to me while in the bed we shared with another man. We in our third year together, moving into our fourth one when this happened. She didn’t care that I found her in bed with another man. She continued to be intimate with him, even though I was there. The anger swelled and burst which caused a chain reaction.

“You motherfucker, get your hands off her!” I exploded and attacked the man. We began fighting. I grabbed him and started punch him in his face. The man managed to overpower me and kicked me to the ground. I remember how hard the impact was. I had fallen on my back hard. My vision got blurry, but I remember the huge smile Amanda had on her face. She was enjoying this. The adrenaline junkie in her kicked in and she loved every minute of it. The other guy grabbed my shirt, stood over and beat the living bloody hell out of me. Afterwards, I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed.

“You’re finally up,” a familiar voice coming from beside me said. It was Peter.

“How’re you doing champ?” he asked.

“I feel like I ran into a brick wall a couple time,” I replied and attempted to smile.

Peter smiled and then his face went grim. “I’m glad you’re alive pal,” he paused and then continued, “I have something to tell you.”

“What’s that?” I asked concerned. “You’re not going to tell me I can’t walk again or I need a transplant to live?”

“No, the doctors said you got the crap beat out of you, but you’ll be fine. Actually, it’s about Amanda.”

I swallowed nervously.

“You see, after the altercation with the guy she jumped into his car with him and headed off. I heard from the police he was speeding and that led to a major accident. Amanda’s,” he paused and again, “she’s dead Thomas.”

“What!” my heart fell to the floor. “That’s not true Peter, how could she do that?”

I was in disbelief. I felt as if the room was spinning. Peter explained that after I got beat up, the neighbors saw the front door left open and they were the ones that brought me to the hospital. They were cool with Peter, so they called him and that’s how he ended up here. Peter was given my cell phone by them as well. Afterwards the call came in from the cops about Amanda.

Three months later, I sat at her funeral and the rain poured outside. I reflected on the relationship I had with Amanda. It wasn’t detrimental just to her. I learned about who I was when I was with her and how I encouraged her behavior. The issues I never dealt with within me made me lose her and lose myself. I blamed myself for everything that happened. I found it hard to say goodbye. I left the funeral and found myself outside, drowning; not from the rain though but instead from the love shared between Amanda and I. I guess our love was broken.