The Break up

Location: 15, Limon Lane, Little Chenning

Time: 12.8.2006, 6.30 pm

“I need to do this, Bryan, you won’t understand. I can’t go on living like this. I need to find some meaning in life”

“Am I not meaning enough? I don’t understand. How can you go from ‘You make my life beautiful. I love you’ to…to this?”

“I never said I love you”

Silence

“You did. You did and you meant it”

“Look you meant a lot to me at one time. You’ve helped me through a lot-an alcoholic dad, a superficial relationship, a divorce and all that but really Bryan, you’d make a much better friend. I...I trust you”

“Is there another man?”

“No, Bryan. You know me. Why would I do that to you?”

“Why? Why would you do this to me?”

Pain in his eyes. She bites her lip, struggling for control. They come rolling down. Breaking up is not as easy at it seems. Unearthly silence follows. She wants to scream. He wants to scream. They feel like fools for believing.

“What now?”

“Now what?

“I guess we could go back to being frie— ”

“We were never friends Em, It’s always been more than that, you know that!”

“We’d make better friends than lovers”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Forget it. We could cut off completely if you want to”

“Is it really that easy for you?”

“You have no idea how hard this is”

“No. I don’t”

“I’m sorry. You mean a lot to me, baby, just not in that way. I can’t think of you like that. I feel like a bitch for doing this to you. But I must. I’m sorry.”

“Never be sorry for being yourself. Isn’t that what you used to say?”

She didn’t know it yet. But she was not being herself. This break up was not something she would normally do. She was disregarding everything that he had given her. Only the last week played over and over in her head. She knew she had compromised when she married Bryan. He was everything she always knew she never wanted. She needed someone to pull her out of the ditch she had buried herself in and he lent a hand.

‘He should never have got his heart involved’, she thought.

She should have known. She knew it would end like this. She could never love him. She knew that from the start. She was being selfish when she said yes. She wanted to get out, to start anew. He was helping her. He was good for her. But not anymore. The overwhelming feeling of ‘Someone-loves-me’ had washed away months ago. She could see the cracks now. They had nothing in common. Different lifestyles, different hobbies, different friends. Nothing clicked. Their time together was the most boringly, endless hours she had had to endure. She tried to spruce it up. Chocolate icecream, long walks hand in hand, star gazing…

Half smile. Purse lips.

“I have to go now”

He had to let her go.

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