Chapter 1

I don’t know where I was, but I know he was there with me. I don’t know what we were doing, all I could tell was that we were together. I felt suspended on mist, clouding my eyes and relying purely on the senses. The touch, the taste, even the smell of him was so potent, so real, so intoxicating. For the barest most infinitesimally small moment I felt another heart beat pressed against my own.
Then I woke up.
At first there was nothing but the listless awareness of the bed sheets surrounding me, the unseemly sensation of rising to the surface after being peacefully submerged in a calm and pleasant ocean. But within minutes I felt like I was coming back to myself, thread by thread the tapestry of my self awareness began to stitch itself back into its unique patterns. Though I was heartbroken to know it was not fast enough.
I was half in a dream and half out when I whispered his name.
“Aidan”, and found myself drifting towards his spectral form in my minds eye to gently slid my hand around him and press myself against his warm flesh. When I touched it however I felt nothing but the cold and bare sheets and as if by some wind the mist-like silhouette vanished into nothing. My heart exploded with a force and I jolted myself awake and let my eyes scan the still and silent room.
“Aidan!?”
There was a flash of lightning in my head and a rush of unwelcome memories, and it all flooded back. Aidan. The Fight. The Break Up. Everything.
I hated in that moment that everything still hurt as badly as it did when it first happened. Even though it had been so long ago now and so much had happened since, it felt like a scar on my heart had opened up and a cascade of loss escaped me like so many tears from my eyes. I could not bear it, and in a sudden rush of bed sheets I found myself running to the bathroom and throwing myself on my knees before the toilet, before finally throwing up. To this day I don’t know why that happened, I only knew that I would be sick and that was all my legs needed to know before I bolted. I didn’t feel unwell, only this all consuming vacuum inside. Could it be like when stars die? Bursting outwards into the blackness and shedding itself of its former glory, before collapsing into a whirling maelstrom consuming all light around it, and with it all hope.
After what felt like Eternity to the power of 10 I finally stopped purging, leaving behind that familiar feeling of self loathing and wretchedness that always comes when I feel my composure slip so far. I fell backwards onto the cold tiling and felt an agony as the heat of my body was immediately stifled by it.
There I stay for a moment, turning the white ceiling into a blank canvas where I engraved a portrait of my memories. I saw warmth, and felt him against me still. The feeling of us dancing alone in my pokey flat in Soho, listening to Sinead O Connor while we held fast to one another. I remember that beautiful and exquisite pain and rush of longing as I remembered how it was like when we made love.
I finally forced myself to shut my eyes away before my heart would tear itself in two, and finally made the effort to stand and crawl back into the bed. I wrapped myself up in the fabric and hoped against hope that I would find some sense of warmth in this cloud-like bed. But no sense of comfort could find me while I was lost in the wilderness of my own mind, and before I knew it the sensations became more potent and all consuming.
I wanted to struggle against it, I wanted to pull out my new phone and call everyone I knew to pull myself back from such a hopeless precipice. But even through the sheen of my held back tears I could see that the light that came into my room was pre dawn and on a Saturday it was an unspoken commandment that no one would call a friend while in the midst of sleep/hangover/ last nights conquest.
So in that moment I felt myself resign to it, and felt myself fall into the black, shed of all my past glory. I swear even now that I could hear the gentle sound of glass breaking and I knew it was my heart.
The tears came unbidden and unwelcome, and I could do nothing to stem the tide. I drew my knees up under the duvet and held them tight against my chest, as if by making myself smaller I could some how lessen this unimaginable pain.
How in the world did I think I was getting over him? I almost laughed at the futility of all my efforts at distracting myself. Where were all my grand plans now? Where was everything that I had planned on, focused on doing? The bigger flat, the better job, all the goals that I hoped to achieve. Nothing meant anything without him. I fell further and finally let myself give way to silent sobs.
I think that was the part that was the worst. Everything I was going through right now and I could not even work myself up enough to make a sound. Some people live their lives like explosions, chaotic and almost beautifully and affecting everything around them like ripples pouring out through the very air that we breathe. But I seemed more like the king of guy who lives life like a shadow, always there but rarely noticed or even considered as anything more than negative space.
The tears came faster then, more frequent and my body shook with every gasp and my tears were wet and salty against my pillow. I put my face into them to try and stop them from flowing, or perhaps more likely that somehow I could smother myself into blissful oblivion.
It was like an eerie calm had settled on me, and I knew it was true. In that moment, a small moment of pure and despicable sadness I had found a desire that I never thought I would feel again. Not since the long nights when life was at its blackest had I thought about it. That silent, exciting and horrifying hunger for self-destruction.
“Could it be?” I thought to myself. “Could it be, that through everything I have gone through that it would be the thing that made me happiest could finally kill me?”
I almost felt the sides of my lips prick up in a wry grin when I considered this impossible paradox to everything I had considered so vital. My God what is wrong with me? Is this hysteria making me see these things flash into my head? How can anyone, no matter how sad or alone feel that there is a funny side to suicide? Oh great now I am writing it in poetry, what’s next a limerick? Shall I write this down, this “Ode to a broken heart”, shall it be posthumously taught in high schools across the country? Will I be remembered in dog eared text books for years and ages to come with children doodling in the margins and scribbling out my name to write simply A. Cunt.
It was pathetic, and that made it worse. Why could I not be an idiot? Someone who did not think and did not care, what is the point of having a heart if all it does is hurt? I could not help but torture myself with the happiness that we once shared, the silent and penetrating anger at his betrayal. I wondered about his heart and if the place I once had there was empty now? Could it be that I was never there at all and that it was all just me? Did I make a relationship out of nothing?
No, if only it was really that simple. The reason it hurts so much is because I did love him and I knew that he loved me back, if he hadn’t then I would never have fallen so far, so deeply, so destructively in love. Without me meaning to do so I made him into oxygen. Pure and necessary, something that is constantly with you and something you always need, but simultaneously one you don’t consider till the moment that you loose it and are left breathless.
The tears mean nothing, I pray that by crying as hard as I can this once then it will not become drawn out and as agonizing as it was feeling now. What I know however is that I am only at the beginning of what is to come, and all that I have to look foreward to is this pain, and how it will eventually dull and weaken. Until the part of me that loved him, the space within me where Aidan lived, was dead forever.
I could not bare to sit in such pathetic sadness, nor did I really have the strength to put myself back together again. So I simply whispered to myself in the black, “its time” and tightened the resolve to force myself into action. The time it took was long and before it was done the sun had properly ascended to a height that put it above the surrounding buildings, disolving the previous nights mist leaving behind sparkling golden motes of moisture that coated the roads and streets. In any other mood I would’ve appreciated this single unexpected act of beauty, but I wasn’t.
I walked back to my bathroom, the site of my earlier purge. I will always remember the strange feeling of those few steps almost like a man had taken me by the strings and was slowly and sluggishly forcing my lifeless body ever forwards. What was left of my dignity wanted me to just avoid my mirror but the pragmatist in me was too much of a nuisance and my ego relented as I cast my sore and itchy eyes to the mirror frame.
The sight that I beheld was truly the face of heartbreak. My eyes were swollen and rimmed with red so deep one could easily suspect my tears were so strong that they were like blood. My hair hung lank and lifeless, covered in sickening grease and had the overall consistency of damp straw. My cheeks were scarlet and ruddy and all across my face were small salty trails where my tears had slid unhindered down my unwashed face. My eyes however were the sight to behold. My usually shining eyes seemed almost as if they had been blacked out. the usual shy twinkle that other people often remarked on seemed to have been deadened. I tried to fake a smile to see if it would reawaken those tiny sparks, but to no avail. I was vaguely shocked to see that the shadows beneath my eyes were as black as pitch and almost appeared to have been drawn on, All at once as I looked at myself I felt a strong and avid repulsion of my face so smeared with tears. I stripped off my bed clothes and stood naked before the glass. I looked so sad and miserable almost like the images of people in the deepest dankest hospitals. I wanted to erase the scene from my body even if I could not wipe it from my memory.
I quickly hopped into the shower and turned the nozzle and let a cascade of water stream on top of me. The first shock wave of icy rain was like a sharp slap across my shoulders and pure agony as it slid down my naked body. For a moment I was nullified, unable to move pushing my face up into the cold shower and slowly feeling the sticky sensation from my face slowly slide away with the water.
In a minute or two which felt like forever, the icy water was tinged with heat and before long there was a thick mist of steam billowing all about me. The heat was almost as unbearable as the ice but I took it all. After all my heart had been abused perhaps it was fitting that my body be punished just as severely.
I ran my fingers through my wet hair, slowly untangling the unkempt mess and ringing out the grease almost letting the shower take care of the rest of my body. I operated the soap and shampoo and conditioner almost on autopilot, my own thoughts still awash with the events of recent days and the undeniable feeling of loneliness. Any other Saturday like today I would be calling Aidan and asking him to come and visit me here at the flat, or I would be looking through the cinema listings to see if there were any good films that we could watch together. Indeed sometimes while I was working at the bar I was subconsciously planning out each of our dates in my head, trying to think of new things to do and new ways that we could have fun. I even managed a wry smile again as I remembered how much trouble I had once got in for nearly kissing him while I was on the job. I then realised how I may never feel him kiss me again I felt a slow weight build around my heart.
“No” I commanded myself. “No No No, Don’t let yourself go back you have to keep looking ahead”.
This of course was the most sensible thing that I could of done, but even as I looked towards the horizon I felt with a slow pang of pain that I had never really conceived of a future where Aidan was not there. I was furious with myself. After all that time on my own I prized myself on the ability to not look ahead or back, both caused too much pain in those times, how could I have let Aidan do so much damage.
As I the soothing shower gel across my stomach I felt a mercurial sense was through me, it seemed that after being sick I felt strangely weak and unlike my usual self. I had not really looked at my body in a long while, and I noticed that my stomach was very tight and flatter than usual, and my ribs had begun to jut out.but had always been thin but I had never before looked this skeletal.
“Typical” I thought to myself, “anyone else would be gaining weight right now, not loosing it”. I could already see Derek’s face in the back of my mind, chastising me for letting my curves go downhill. Other people would probably love it if they lost weight in the wake of a rough break up, I imagine that would help the healing process come along nicely. In me however the new definition to my rib cage and the ever-present thinness of the limbs made me look ever more like a posterchild for anorexic heroin addiction.
“Look what you do to me Aidan”, the words were out my mouth before I even really had the chance to process that I was saying them. Even though the words were lost out to the loud splashing of the shower on the porcelain tub, I still felt mortified with myself, and I turned the shower taps in disgust.
I drew the curtain open and tried to glimpse my reflection, I wanted to see if I had somehow washed away the wraith-like image I had seen before, the steam however had denied me that making the mirror a perfect fog of condensation. I dried myself perhaps a little too vigorously leaving red patches on my flesh where I had rubbed the towel against me a little too hard, but I don’t think I could even register the pain of the flesh while in my current gloom.
I walked to my wardrobe, thinking that I should feel better when I look better. I knew even as I thought it that it should be the other way around but it did not hurt to pretend to myself that everything was ok. In the less than 2 seconds walk to the cupboard door I made a mental inventory of all my clothes and what I felt like wearing, and I had just settled on the black shirt and was debating the choice of jeans when I opened the door.
Horror of Horror’s. Hanging there in amongst the mass of familiar items was a single item I knew was not mine. It was a small green jacket with sewn on black buttons that didn’t match but somehow seemed to work. Aidan’s favourite. My breath caught in my lungs and for a second no air could escape and my heart seemed to skip 1, 2, 3 beats in that moment. I reached out and touched it, and I could not help but remember the first time I ever saw it, the first time I ever saw him. I recovered from my shock soon enough and grabbed the jacket off the railing, some sense of anger steeling me in a way I never expected. I opened a side cupboard full of nothing but the usual detritus that always gravitates towards an unused space and I threw it in, practically slamming the door behind it, and almost catching my own fingers.
There was a strange feeling of absolution in that final act, but I would give myself no respite, I went back to myself and decided that the light blue jeans would do for the day. I did not look back, I knew I couldn’t. Now was not the time.
Once I dressed myself the sense of weight loss was enhanced, my usually snug 30 inch waist jeans were working hard to slip from my narrowing waistline. My extra small shirt was still a nice tight fit, but the defined skeletal structure was showing through, so a loose fitting jumper was pulled on top to make it at least a little bit less obvious to the casual observer.
When I was dressed and cleaned up I felt immediately a lot better in myself. It was like I had pulled on a new skin to stop myself feeling a little bit less vulnerable and exposed, and the jumper warmed me from outside which made my aching heart a little bit more comfortable to handle. It was like having a hug in a way being clothed in this bulky monstrosity. It was a jumper I would never wear on a night out, one I would never when I went to see friends, but somehow it helped me, if only in the most superficial ways. I tried to remember where it was that I had actually bought it, but I couldn’t remember, now for some reason I wished I could.
The sun was beginning to beat down onto the street and through the gap in the curtains I could see the first signs of civilization finally begin to flood onto the streets of Soho. I was marveled by how care free they were, how oblivious that barely a few feet away I was watching them, careless of the fact that I felt like I was falling further and further away from the world.
A part of me wished that the world outside would stop turning. I wanted everyone to wear black and walk with their heads down. I even wanted it to rain, slamming onto the pavement like it did in my shower. It seemed to hard to conceive that the world had not ended, even though within me it felt like it had.
Even I had to smile at that, had I become so vain as to think that the world should stop just for me. Maybe there was something in all of the agony that was purely self indulgent, after all in less than a week since the fight I had become an emotional masochist and I had mostly been taking to my bed. When I tried to remember when it was that I last ate something I realised I could not even remember.
“Well that explains my new Starvin’ Marvin Look” I thought to myself.
I do not what I wanted in that moment, the shower had gone some of the way to making me feel better that I had in the last week, but I still did not feel like me again. I put a hand to my face and felt a near beard slowly rising out against my face. Disgusting the state I was in. I went back to my bathroom and ran the tap to let it get warm while I smeared the acrid smelling Shaving foam across my face, and quick as a flash I picked up my razor.
I found myself looking at the blade, morbid fascination seemed to surge into me and feelings I had not felt in a long time seemed to become stark and strange in the forefront of my thoughts. I felt my skin prickle and itch as I had memories seep back from a half forgotten adolescence, and the tiny row of scars on my inside leg seemed to tingle in anticipation, like they did the night Aidan first touched them. It was pure frustration with my thoughts of Aidan that forced me to look away and without even looking I proceeded to shave away the beard till my skin was taught and smooth again. Once again it felt like I was going through the motions on a kind of auto pilot. My head was still washing in the details I did not even care to recall, it was so potent that it only occurred to me when I had finished, that I had not even spared a moment to look at my reflection in the fog free mirror.
The image was simply me, but it was not me. With a now beard free face it was easier to tell that I had lost weight and the slightly hollow look of my cheeks seemed to pronounce it even more. But the same young face was staring back at me, the same lips, the normally religiously straightened hair now tousled and half dry rising up into a mass of dark brown curls. The dark circles were less noticeable and I was confident that no one but me would notice them in the light of day,(though to be safe I mentally picked out a pair of aviator sunglasses for when I was on the street). My eyes were still not the same however they seemed to have been altered. I could not imagine how or why, after all they were the same as they were every day, but I knew in my heart that they were just not the same. It was like a marble statue in a museum, which had become chipped and broken and worn by time, and by mankind, something had been lost along the way.
I picked up my phone from be bedside cabinet and flipped it open. It jingled back to life after being off and seemed a cheerful note with which to start the day. Within seconds I had been alerted to 27 text messages. I was frankly rather amazed but then I rarely switched my phone off, as it was my one link to the outside world sometimes, a small lifeline which I have always treasured. I looked through the notes and saw that a few familiar messages, Callum was telling me it will get easier and to hang in there. Rosie was angry with Aidan and said that she would gladly scream at him for me if I only said she could. Damon had even sent a rather brief message saying simply “It gets easier Bun”. It wasn’t till I filtered them till I saw a whopping 12 texts from Derek alone. I felt a sharp pang of guilt somewhere in the pit of my stomach, I had promised him I would call when he brought me home that night.
“Well fun as this has been”, I said to no one in particular, “I think its time to get up and walk.” I did not know where I wanted to go, all I could really say was that I needed to get up and get out of this scene from a broken heart and see what the sun feels like. I also needed to text people to tell them that I was ok, but I did not really want to pick up the phone if they called, being in a shop was as good an excuse as any not to answer and to text periodically.
I picked up my aviators, and my phone and slipped them in my pocket, but as I made my way to the door, I suddenly looked back towards the bed, where not an hour or so ago I would have sworn blind that I had been with Aidan again. I felt like Orpheus looking back trying to see Eurydice, only to watch her wither and fade into the shadows. There was only my bed and my rumpled bed sheets, I am not sure if that was worse or not.
I put the shades on and turned my head towards the door hoping no one would not notice my red rimmed eyes through the reflective shades, and walked on towards the sun.