In the End

No one had ever told me that a heart crushing made no sound.

I had expected a hard, shattering moment. Even a bit of drama. A scene like in the movies, when the main character would scream to the heavens and ask the why.

Well, I knew the why.

Perhaps that explained the silence. My heart—it just pulverized. And in that precise moment, when he finally went back home—a thousand miles away—and left me, I finally understood. My eyes were opened to the hard truth. The reality I didn’t want to admit to myself became obvious.

Again, they did not choose me.

Again, I didn’t matter enough.

Again…

Only numbness remained.

I returned to the cold car after leaving the train station, this time without the love of my life next to me. The heavy rain hit the windshield hard. How ironic. Perhaps the sky wept that day for me, for us.

I had told him I loved him, like I had loved no one before. Such a powerful emotion—that of loving someone with all your soul. It resembled a wildfire under enraged winds. In those moments, you could be at the zenith of the world, believing you could achieve anything as long as the other person was with you. The next instant, you were free-falling, unable to prevent the crash against the hard floor, just watching your imminent death and hoping for nothing different. I was hanging from his hands, giving my all and everything. And when he decided to go back to his home country and marry, he let me fall. He had cut the ropes that were holding me.

I had dared to believe in hope.

That was a mistake I would prevent anyone I cared for from making from then on. Such a lie. Such a tortuous way that your heart had to convince your mind that your decision was smart. I dared to believe that he would choose me. That he would fight against tradition, against his family, and declare to the world that I was his, and he was mine. They could have hated us, but our love was stronger. Lies; rotten lies, we were fed from a tender and innocent age.

I had high expectations, but reality didn’t meet them.

The gap between those two became my executioner.

I knew what they would say: I should have seen it coming. I knew he was in an arranged marriage and that he was only passing by. Passing by for three whole years. When I met him at the campus cafe, I never expected to feel anything. You never do; that’s why it happened. Because love stabs you when your shields are down. We had chatted for so long, talking about the classes we were taking, arguing about deep subjects. His accent didn’t make it difficult to understand at all; on the contrary! How much more pleasing it was to speak. I would let him speak for ages, just to hear how we pronounced the most common words into snippets of exotic promises. I thought I fell in love with his brain first. Sounds odd, but I didn’t start loving him right away by how he looked. He was not unattractive; he just wasn’t someone I said was my type. But his mind… his mind was a well of knowledge, but never in a pretentious way. I sometimes blushed at my ignorance, but he always took the time to educate me, never in a condescending manner.

It didn’t matter though; not now, not anymore.

I just stared at the drops falling on the glass, at the dark skies and felt the rumbling of the engine. I didn’t know why tears were not coming. There was no anger, no sadness, and no happiness. My body was completely removed from the situation. I was just a shell living on this grey day. I thought somewhere in the back of my mind a voice was screaming, but I didn’t dare to look at it.

I turned on the radio. “In the End” by Linkin Park was on. Each note hitting me, each line and each word plucking a string of something I believed dead. The feeling clashed with my invisible shield. I didn’t turn the radio off. Somehow, hearing those emotions outside my body made it a bit more bearable. Someone out there was feeling like I did, and that was comforting. How two broken hearts could have sympathy for one another even without ever meeting. The world didn’t stop around me. I was still in the car, with the parking ticket soon expiring. I took a deep breath and put the seatbelt on. How many things our brain did automatically. But that day everything felt slow, like cotton wool was coating me. I held the wheel, and I drove away from the station.

Away from where he had stood a moment ago, leaning over to give me a last kiss.

Both of us were aware of what that moment represented, but neither of us dared to say the words.

How naïve.

We had thought that keeping silent would prevent the truth from coming out.

The streets were empty that evening. A little mercy. I didn’t think I could tolerate looking at other couples right then, holding hands and smiling at each other. I scoffed. Who was I kidding? Other couples? We were never a couple. A pair of mismatched lost souls, perhaps. But never a couple. I was never the other half. I was always the other. A well hidden, secret other. One that would disappear forever from his future, my name never again on his lips.

It felt like death.

Or how I imagined death might feel. Not in the physical act of it, but the ceasing of existence one. Your name forgotten. Your memory evaporated.

How scared Achilles had been of that fate, so much that he preferred to die young but remain immortal.

I understood it then. I didn’t want to disappear either. Perhaps I would return to the land of the living. Perhaps this time I would choose to be remembered. I had to start with a simple thing first; to choose me instead of waiting for others to choose myself. How could they when I didn’t do it? I would work on that. But tomorrow. Today, I would give my heart time to collect all the pieces and just feel the rain instead of my tears.