Broken

Blake lay in bed, his eyes open. He couldn’t believe, couldn’t bear the fact she had left him. His room was the same, too small to be called home, small enough to be affordable. The Ikea clock continued to tick insufferably, reminding him that he had been replaying the same memories over and over again for the past…. he looked at the clock…. 6 hours. Tonight, it seemed life wouldn’t grant him the sweet respite of sleep.

Weren’t they happy at some point together? They must have been, otherwise it wouldn’t have started. Could he have acted differently? Why would she be so stupid as to choose someone she barely knew over someone she had been with for 2 years? He knew these thoughts; he had been scrolling through them for the past 3 weeks. His mind was trapped in their endless loop, questions with no answer, emotions disguised as resentment. His mind imagined that running through the memories once more could reveal something. Some hidden truth about him, her, or maybe love. The acrid feeling in his chest reared its head once more. He felt it rising with each happy moment he remembered. Slowly rising beyond his neck and surging into his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, fully giving in to the sadness. Two tears slowly flowed down from his eyes, leaving their trails on the sides of his face. They dissolved into the already wet fabric of his pillow at the end of their path. Blake couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand how stupid he had been to love her, and how stupid he was to keep on loving her.

The room was steeped in semi darkness. The streetlight outside filtered in through his shutters, suggesting the presence of a chair, a desk and a wardrobe. The clock tormented Blake, making his misery seem intolerably long while mocking the length of time which had passed. How he wished it could be morning again, how he wished he could stop thinking of her already. He wanted it, needed it to stop. It was now 4 in the morning. He had accepted he would not reach the blissful unconsciousness of sleep

Blake sat up, his hands fumbled for the light switch on his bedside lamp. He pressed it. The warm glow of the yellow light spread across the room. The white plaster of the walls which had been grey a moment ago now turned golden. Blake looked at the painting which hung alone on the wall directly in front of his bed. It was a painting of a boat caught in a storm. His dad, an art amateur, had given him the painting when he first moved out to study. The lone vessel was caught between two waves which towered above the wooden fisher boat. The sky behind it was dark and ominous, and the light in the ship’s cabin was the only source of hope in the painting. In Blake’s room, the light, which usually made the room feel cozy now had little effect. He stood up and walked to his desk, took a sheet of paper, and began to write.

The piece of paper stood alone in his consciousness, as if all other things had faded away. He wrote frenetically, pouring his life through the tip of his silver-plated fountain pen. All of existence at that point was reduced to the smooth-coloured letters his pen traced upon the paper yellowed by his bedside lamp. With a fervour common to religious fanatics, he emptied himself unto the pages which lay before him, losing himself in the cathartic process of description. For a moment, he had escaped the slow progression of time. Eternity passed in what felt like nothing more than an instant. His hand ached. His forehead was moist with effort despite the cold. His mouth was dry. If only his hand could write faster. Pangs of hunger came and went. The clock’s annoying ticking sound had faded into irrelevance. He felt slightly dizzy. His vision blurred at times and he had to blink once or twice to refocus his eyes. His pen never stopped. It kept gliding on the paper in front of him, liquid obsidian flowing smoothly from it. The words were now alive, finding their predetermined space on the paper. Each one having forgotten the word that came before it and unaware of the one that would come after. The paper was full of individuals linked to each other by hidden meaning. The paper seemed almost polished, offering no resistance to the pen that travelled back and forth across its surface. Letter after letter, word after word, sentence after sentence; Blake’s creation was in his image.

Blake opened his eyes. The midday sun shone brightly through the blinds, leaving streaks of sunlight that lay flat on the floor before crawling up the whitewashed walls. Specks of dust flew in and out of the white streaks. They lit up briefly before disappearing into the darkness of the rest of his room. Thousands of specks consumed themselves without reason or pattern. Blake stretched and looked at the clock. It was already 12. Thank God today was Saturday; maybe he would treat himself to an English breakfast with a glass of orange juice at the pub down the street. He sat up and looked at his desk. The light was reflecting off of something. He got out of bed and went closer to investigate. The desk was empty except for what seemed to be a piece of broken stained glass. It had broken into many fragments; each stained different hues of red. Blake couldn’t remember how these fragments had arrived here. He desperately tried to recall last night but could not remember anything, not even going to sleep. Blake vaguely remembered being upset about something, maybe someone, but his memory refused to focus. He took a closer look at the fragments, taking the time to carefully inspect them. Some fragments were big and had been cleanly broken off, while other smaller ones seemed to have been smashed in anger. Every fragment had a pattern engraved into it, so that it was obvious they used to form a single object together. The fragments reminded him of the stained glass in his hometown’s church. They played games with the light shining upon them, so that Blake’s desk was a battlefield on which shadow, light and the colour red fought each other for ground. Blake reached for one of the bigger pieces, it was several centimetres thick and was a dark shade of red.

Upon touching it, his heart was overcome with grief, as if he had lost something dear to him. He let go of the piece which fell on his desk with a heavy thud, leaving a mark on the wooden surface. The feeling disappeared instantly. Startled, Blake tried touching the fragment without picking it up. The same feeling of overwhelming grief washed over him, almost bringing him to tears before he moved his hand away. Blake turned his attention to one of the smaller and thinner fragments, realising that the difference in colour between the fragments was due to the thickness of the glass. This one was almost transparent, being only very faintly dyed pink. He carefully brought his hand closer, reaching out his index to touch the fragment gently. An image of a woman came to mind, the smell of her perfume, her hair billowing in the wind, the sound of waves slowly lapping against the sand and laughter resonating in the dusk. Who was that? His heart ached softly, waves of inexplicable emotions blending together. Blake moved his finger away and the feeling once again vanished as if it had never been there. The patterns on the fragments fascinated him, intricate swirls swept across their surface, curling and swerving beautifully. A master craftsman must have spent weeks engraving the motifs on the fragile surface of the glass, orchestrating harmony with precision and detail. Who would break such a thing of beauty? And how did it end up here?

He suddenly felt the urge to stick the pieces back together. After all he had the whole weekend ahead of him, and he had no better use for his time. He was supposed to have lunch with his friend John on Sunday but he could always cancel it. His mind was made up, he headed to a nearby art store to get some specialised glue, called John to cancel and came back to what was going to become his workstation.

He started off with the big pieces, picking them up and sticking them back together along their clean-cut edges. Every piece he touched revived the intense feeling of longing and of sadness which he had glimpsed upon touching that first fragment. The emotions washed over him as he abandoned himself to the tedious task of picking up the glass pieces and repairing what was broken. Each consecutive piece that he attached made the feeling grow more and more intense. So much so that he would take a break every fourth piece attached and then, after a while, every other piece. When he finally attached the last piece, tears were streaming down his face and his chest felt heavy. The big pieces formed a disk, with a hole in the middle where the smaller pieces went. It was now around 8pm. He decided to continue tomorrow, hoping that he would be able to easier withstand the emotional pain the smaller pieces brought. He got to work the next day after eating breakfast. Each of the smaller pieces unearthed a hidden memory, most containing the girl he had seen when touching the first fragment. Some were happy, others less. He came to understand that the girl’s name was Jessica, and that they had been together as a couple. Each memory came to him as if they had been someone else’s. He witnessed his past self’s actions but had no active memory of ever doing these things. It felt like he was watching a movie about a past life he had forgotten. And yet each assembled fragment explained the emotions he had felt when touching the larger fragments. Each happy scene came together with the bittersweet emotion of self-pity and longing. Each memory of a fight was followed by the same twin regrets: wishing he had said the right thing, and feeling foolish for missing the red flags all along. He looked at his desk, only one fragment left. Tears had dried on his cheeks and he felt his chest shudder with every breath. He carefully applied glue along its edges and slotted it into the only hole left in the scarlet-coloured disk on his desk.

I remembered everything. I remembered writing for hours late at night before yesterday, writing about what I was going through before finally collapsing out of exhaustion on my bed. Somehow, my story must have transformed into the shards of glass I discovered the next day. My memories now fully belonged to me. I could remember Jessica. I could remember us. I had been made whole again. An urge to throw away the disk surged through my mind. I could then get rid of it and everything it represented, forget everything and never have to think about it again. I picked up the disk, walked towards the dustbin. My hand reached out to drop it, but hesitation stopped me. Was throwing it away really the answer?

John looked at his watch, he had been waiting for 15 minutes now. He sighed. The bar where he had agreed to meet up with Blake was, as usual, bustling with activity. His pint lay on the counter, he sipped away at it. Ever since Blake had broken up with Jessica, he had changed. Long gone was the usual cheerful Blake, he had been replaced with a moping sad mess. At first John and his other friends had given him space to recover from it, but when nothing had changed after a few months, they tried distracting Blake from it. Even setting up dates to get his mind off of Jessica. Nothing had worked. Everybody else having given up, only he regularly met up with Blake to try and get his mind off the breakup. He took a sip from his beer, when Blake had cancelled on him last weekend, he was a bit worried. He knew Blake didn’t have any other plans and had probably spent the weekend wallowing in despair. He looked around, the barman was busy pouring drinks from his beer tap, a group of teenagers chatted loudly at one of the tables, two or three of the regular customers were sat at the counter, each having a drink and talking. John absorbed himself in the lively atmosphere of the pub. A waitress pushed open the metal-coloured swinging doors and entered the room with a plate of nachos in one hand and 3 beers in the other. She held the three glasses by their handle, and they weighed her hand down. She looked around in a daze, then headed towards table 18, where she plonked the beers and the nachos in front of the teenagers. They thanked her and she headed back for the kitchen. It was probably her first day on the job, as John had never noticed her on the many occasions where he had sat at the polished oak tables. It was at that moment that Blake came in, “ Sorry for being late” “ No worries, mate, how’ve you been” “ Alright”. John started making small talk, commenting on the fact the bar had a new waitress and complaining about how the usual beer they served was still overpriced. He knew how these conversations went, he would talk and Blake would listen for a bit, his mind completely elsewhere. Then, once the small talk was over, he would give John space to dole out his sorrow. He would then try and comfort Blake, but above else, he would listen. The small talk felt less arduous to John today, maybe Blake was finally starting to get over her. Then again, maybe not. “So? Have you been feeling better lately?” Blake paused for a moment, took a long sip of his beer. “ I feel better. Somehow, I’ve started to make my peace with it. I don’t hate her, after all I never have, and I think I’m finally ready to turn the page ” The good news was so unexpected that it left John speechless. “Mate that’s great!! Finally! We were getting worried.” “ Yeah, I’ve got to tell you all about it”.

At Blake’s apartment, next to the painting of a boat rocked by stormy waves, a red disk with intricate swirling patterns had been hung up.