angel on fire

[Jezebel]

It started like any other day. I woke up to the blaring of my cheap, plastic alarm clock and the famished mewl of Clover. I swear, one look at that cat, and you would think she had emerged from the grave. Her eyes are too large, her gray fur a complete, un-brushable mess, and her tail is once again bandaged because she can't wrap her head around the fact that the stove is hot. She sat at the end of my bed, her large body causing the corner to dip and the covers to pull back from my legs, and she howled. I could hear the feed me, peasant in the deep, demanding sound, and all I could think was to throw a pillow at her, just to shut her up.

I don't know what was worse.
My cat, or the alarm clock.

While she was howling, the clock was chiming, and no amount of smashing my hand against it would shut it off. Instead, I had somehow managed to smack it off the worn oak table, where it clattered on the floor and continued to chime. The face was cracked, the numbers unreadable, and still it wouldn't shut up. Thinking it possessed, I finally threw the covers off - and Clover in the process - before slamming my foot repeatedly against the clock.

Finally, silence.

Of course, now I was late, my phone was missing, and god only knows where I had put my keys. Blood coated the bottom of my foot, and during all of this, I saw the small piece of paper taped to my door. This - this was not a normal part of my morning. Feeling as if my life was about to be changed forever, like some kind of ominous presence was pressing down on my chest, I pushed myself from the bed and hopped towards my door, trembling fingers plucking the horrific piece of paper from the cracked wood.

At first, I thought I had to be going crazy. I knew that handwriting. I knew that familiar, hasty slope. I knew the dip of the 'i', the curve of the 'a' and the illegible signature at the end. I knew all of these things, yet it was the words that I couldn't seem to process. The 'I'm sorry, baby, but this isn't going to work out. I don't love you anymore. - Christopher.' Those were the words I couldn't piece together. I curled my fingers around the piece of paper, the damning words, and I crushed it in my first. As I started to tremble, as I started to sob, my face feeling as if were on fire, as if my shame was on display for everyone, though I was alone - Clover wound between my legs - and howled.

It had started as a normal day, and now, twelve hours later, when I finally got the strength to pull myself to my computer, to this page - I am here to tell you...

It turned into something completely and utterly fucked up.

- J.

[Jezebel]

Whoever decided to pen the phrase 'time will heal all wounds' had to either have been a pathological liar, or they never experienced true pain. The kind of pain that felt as if your heart was ripped from your chest and was now lying on the floor at your feet, screaming for mercy as it was repeatedly stomped on. That is the kind of pain that I believe can never truly be healed, no matter how much time has passed. Of course, perhaps the renowned owner of that annoying, gruesome phase never had to witness the cause of their pain find new ways to further it.

I have.

It's been two days since Christopher left, and it seems as if I have seen him more now than through the entire three-year course of our engagement. First, he came for his clothes. Then, he came for the key to his old apartment. Finally, and this is the real kicker, here - he came for his ring.

I had barely opened the door before he had stepped in, looking as if he had come right off the cover of Esquire magazine, his smile delectable and his blue eyes sparkling. Here I was, in the same clothes that I had been wearing the day he left me, my hair in a messy, unbrushed bun atop my head, with ice-cream and wine stains on my shirt. I knew I had to have smelled like the shame and heartache he had brought me, and there he was, standing before me, as if he hadn't a care in the world; as if he hadn't ruined my life.

"Do you feel anything at all?" I had asked, my voice cracked and worn from crying as my puffy, red lined eyes scanned him from head to toe in search of a wrinkle, a hair out of place - anything to tell me that he had cared.

"Of course I do. You were special."

Seven words.

Seven little words, strung together to drive that knife deeper into my heart.

I was special.

I don't remember what was said after that. He demanded the ring back, pulled it from my finger, and casually slipped it back into his pocket as he strolled down the hall, whistling. He had literally ripped my world apart, had left me bleeding in the door of my apartment, and he was whistling.

So, please, continue to tell me that time is all I need to heal from him.

- J.