This is Goodbye

"I just, I don't understand why you're suicidal. It's a concept I can't grasp in the least and I'll never be able to help you if I don't know what's wrong," she said. Genuine concern washed over every word, though the tone came out as frustration that wasn't going to continue on much longer. She was just...tired. Attempting to comprehend something painful when that comprehension does not occur naturally has that effect on people.

Her tone spoke louder than her words. He'd heard it a thousand times before, but never from Her.

He paused a moment to collect his thoughts. He opened his mouth and closed it twice, having found words to begin but not the right words. The inability to speak as eloquently as he could write or type had been the cause of much frustration in his life. So much gets lost in translation, between nuance and volume, vocabulary and accent and energy, that speaking had never been his strong suit.

She read his hesitation and as always, knew what to say and when to say it.

"What is it that can make you so sad that you'd want to end your life?"

He knew what she'd done, just then. Obviously, She knew it wasn't something as simple as sadness. Though if she'd been more vague or more specific, He would have either gone on a tangent or given up explaining himself altogether. She always probed diplomatically, capable of using the words he needed to hear...the words that would actually get to the core of the issue, because she wanted to get to the core of the issue -something nobody else had felt the inclination to do.

"Sadness..is a symptom. Not a cause. Nothing I'd end my life over," he began. "I just don't understand..."

He had been staring at his lap so he turned to look at her puzzled yet patient face. Dazzling eyes like flawless sapphires stared intently into his generic browns, an exact parallel to the way he felt compared to Her. He held Her gaze, despite the impulse to look away. His entire life he'd felt uncomfortable looking people in the eye, as the eyes speak volumes. But sharing that secret communication with Her was worth the discomfort.

God dammit she's beautiful, he thought, though he said nothing.

He looked out at the view offered by Her apartment balcony. The sun would rise soon, and the inky night sky was warming up into royal blues. Speckled glitter shimmered from the nearby downtown area, where early morning commuters queued at stop lights while locals bustled quickly over crosswalks.

He gestured toward the people.

"I don't understand...them."

Then with both arms in a grander motion, encompassing the sky and the moon down to the silhouette mesas in the distance, down further still to the hustle and flow of the local inhabitants, he gestured again.

"I don't understand this. I don't understand life. It doesn't make any fucking sense."

He drew a deep breath and exhaled, then He returned his gaze to Her. Ever-intuitive, she knew when not to speak. Her face showed only rapt attention, drinking in His words. He silently wished to assimilate that quality into his own personality. Simultaneously, He wondered if she'd blinked at all since he'd begun speaking.

"You know when you're dreaming, and it's really vivid and all the details are present that make it feel real? And if asked, you wouldn't be able to discern in that moment whether you were dreaming or awake?"

She nodded and He continued.

"..but then something weird happens like a lizardman walks through the door and all of a sudden you snap awake and sit straight up in your bed, and the dream begins fading while you try to remember what the fuck you just experienced? That's what Life feels like to me. How it always has felt. Except I never wake up. Crazy shit keeps happening that I can't understand and I just want to wake up."

Her gaze faltered for a moment of interrogative recollection while her brain searched for a similar personal experience with which she could sympathize. Her eyelashes fluttered and she bit her bottom lip.

You are so fucking beautiful, he thought.

Her eyebrows pricked and her eyes widened, both almost imperceptibly (though of course He noticed) and those god-damn sapphires pierced Him once more.

"Go on," She suggested.

Like every time before, The eye-lock staggered him a moment. And like every time before, He worried that She noticed.

"I don't know how," He lied.

"Yes you do," she countered.

Fuck.

She knows me too well.

"I can't tell you. You understand me like nobody ever has, and if I was to tell anyone, it would be you. But I can't bring myself to do it."

He looked defeated. She leaned onto him and put an arm over his shoulder. The physical contact between His build and Her feminine frame felt like heaven itself. He could feel His emptiness refilling. Better yet, he could feel that the act of refilling his emptiness was filling her as well, rather than draining Her. She was no longer frustrated with Him. If She was anybody else, He would have resented that. With Her, He enjoyed and encouraged Her methods of gentle manipulation.

Her slender hand slid up his back, onto his neck and bristled as her palm pet the stubble on the back of his head. French-tip manicured fingernails gently clawed a pattern down to the base of His skull and she repeated the process, still silently observing Him.

I love it when you pet me, He thought, with the blissful, unadulterated joy of an animal. Obviously she was just giving him physical reassurance, but he much preferred to see it His way.

The time was finally ripe for this, so after years of pining for Her, months of planning for Her, and a week of Self-restraint, He decided to lay it all on the table. Still cautiously, He spoke:

"I need to be able to speak freely, without fear that anything will be ruined when I do. Would you, for a moment, suffer me to talk to you... about you?"

    "You have my word. Though to be clear, am I the reason you often feel suicidal??"

The pain in her eyes, though she expertly concealed it, nearly suffocated the fire he was attempting to build.

"No, not directly. In much the same way sadness is not the reason."

      "...Am I a symptom?"

Her question held no accusatory implications. None that He could detect anyway. She was simply present in the conversation, and nonjudgemental. He almost hated her for being so Perfect. How was She even possible??

"I would not call you a symptom...or a cause, for that matter. You are not the problem. How do I phrase this?"

The time had come.

"Bear with me and know that I tell you this so that you will understand what I am trying to convey. And it can only be accomplished through a dialogue. Just keep up and answer honestly and I believe by the end of the conversation you will have a deeper understanding of le'pelle du vide. This is not a rouse and I have no agenda. "

       "I would never suspect you of having one," she said earnestly. 

"How do you feel about me?" He asked.

"You're my best friend," she said without hesitation, and followed it up with "...How do you feel about me?" Feigning as if she didn't know where this was heading.

"I Love You. With all my heart. You're my soulmate. I want to be with you and I always have. You're my everything."

She wore a weak, rueful smile and he continued.

"You don't want me, though. Not in that capacity. It's ok, I've come to terms with it. But I have to watch you struggle with men who are reptiles compared to me. You pick suitors who drain you and take from you and You always wish they had my qualities. You wish they were me. But they're not. Worse yet, you have me. But you don't want me. You want someone who is not me, but would treat you in the way that only I am capable of treating you."

She remained silent.

"My biggest fear for the past few years has been this conversation. The one where I lay it on the line. Because it can only end 2 ways: 1) you deny any romantic interest and I wither back to my existence, worse than ever. 2) you give me a shot, and I have to watch you slowly realize you don't want to be with me, staying because you don't want to hurt me by leaving, and my Love for you becomes the reason you die inside. I never told you how I feel, because of that fear. You are not the cause or the symptom. I am. My feelings are. I am unable to reconcile such contradictions in my life and I don't want to live on this planet any longer."

"What if there was a third option?" She squeaked out the words, clearly on the verge of bawling. That alone was enough to crush him, but his powers of perception picked up on so many more nuance emotions. All the way down to petty ones like feeling dumb for her voice breaking while she spoke. She leaned away slightly and began playing with the rings on her fingers as her hands lay in her lap. "What would it be?"

He looked her straight in her watering eyes, and held her hands where they lay. "We live happily ever after. And it was worth the risk. Unfortunately, the risk of you never speaking to me again, coupled with the unlikelihood of a happily ever after, would never be a wise bet. So I either live a half-life, not knowing, or live in pain. I'd honestly rather just call it a day."

Her tears streamed down her cheeks. Her chin quivered and she struggled for a voice.

"I'm so sorry," she cried softly, through the distorted sort of smile we wear while weeping.

"It's ok. I Love You even if I can't have you," he assured her. "It just..it's another item in a long list of things that don't make any sense to me. You make me happier than anyone has ever made me. But you will never want be with me. And my brain cannot wrap around the dichotomy. The cruelty."

"Not your cruelty," he added, after the first issuance of the word forced her to double over and sob, sandwiching her palms between her face and knees. "Life's cruelty."

He continued as she cried. There was no turning back, now:

"Nothing in life has ever made sense to me. I try and try and always fail. The people who want me, who say they love me, are the people who do the cruelest things to me. The vilest betrayers end up having the most of me. The best of friends to me are either a thousand miles away or unavailable almost all of the time. Or just not interested. I can't tell, though, because I'm usually the only one doing the communicating.

   But still, I reset and push on and try to keep going even though I don't want to. Hope drives me. Even though I've seen no evidence to warrant that hope. I don't want to live but I give it another chance. And it has been so bad for so long, that I worry there is a hell. And that I'm in it. Right now. Doomed to repeat it forever. And my only regret will be that I didn't hang myself sooner, to avoid the larger hardships I've endured."

She stopped sobbing and wiped off tears, smearing her makeup. She looked amazing, the Dark mask she'd randomly and unknowingly painted across her face made her look even more like a Goddess than before.

You are so goddamn beautiful, he thought.

He reached up to comb a rogue lock of her hair that had matted against her temple back over her ear and she recoiled from his touch. The center of his chest imploded but he pretended to be ok with it.

Her understanding demeanor ripped to shreds, She lashed out."I am sorry that I don't feel that way about you. I love our relationship the way it is. I can't begin to picture a romantic life with you. You're a psychopath."

He was less hurt by that statement that she thought he'd be. After all, it wasn't as if he had been unaware of his own personality flaws. She continued.

"But I don't see, How you don't see, how killing yourself is the most selfish FUCKING THING you could POSSIBLY DO!"

He responded softly.

"Truth is, it is selfish. People do think highly of me. People like me. And they would miss me. I love my children and for the longest time they have been my reason for living. I can't guarantee they'll be happier in the long run, maybe we learn to hate each other. Stranger things have happened. But I know for certain that having a father commit suicide cannot bode well for them, and I would never again be there to help them. So I stay. I have been selfless my entire life. I am selfless today, for the most part. And it is a massive slap in the face, that I would be remembered for ending a life I hate, rather than remembered for all the good I've done. Which only adds to the contradictions that make me wish it would end."

She paused and reflected on his words but held fast to her anger, pacing at this point, while he remained in front of the view of the skyline. At this point the sky had become a dark blue, striped lazily with purple and pink hues. The cityscape had become more visible. A bright golden strip split the two horizontally, as the sun peeked over the desert.

After a moment, she stood upright, took a breath, and when she released it, her anger had vanished. Visibly, anyways. It occurred to him for the millionth time how similar she was to him. How perfectly paired they were. Just as he concealed emotions from even her, so too was she concealing them from him. If only she'd come to her fucking senses.

Not a snowball's chance in hell, he thought.

"What about me?" She demanded with the softness he'd always admired. She was incapable of acting as furiously as she wanted to. With others as well, but especially with him.

"What about you?" He said, knowing his words would cut her, but hoping this conversation would lead where she'd forgotten, due to her emotional state. It worked like a charm.

"What about me!?" She mocked. "Why don't I have a say in this? Did you even try to be more than a friend? NOPE! Did you ever make the move and - (she growled a little and he fell even more in Love) - FUCKING grab me and tell me you wanted me!?"

He stood up for the first time since they'd began their verbal journey and walked over to her. She took half a step back then regretted it and opted instead to stand her ground, defiantly. He stood toe to toe with her...the only thing between them were the feminine yet toned arms She had crossed under her breasts.

You're so goddamn beautiful, he thought.

"Search yourself for a moment, dove. Remove this day from the equation. How would you have reacted to that?"

She did as she was instructed. Her posture softened noticeably over the next fifteen seconds while she tried her best to hang onto anger, and she dropped back onto her seat on the sofa.

"I would have said...no," She confessed.

His chest felt the puncture from her words again, yet he managed to keep his composure while wishing at the same time that she would just use a fucking knife instead.

"I know. And....I know..." His words were beginning to fail him.

"I don't know why I don't want you...I'm sorry." She began to sob again, and he could see the interior turmoil he had wrought that was causing her to wince in an attempt to chase the reality away. "You are my knight in shining armor. My therapist. My mentor. My best friend. But I don't think I will ever want you or Love You the way you want me to. Why are we like this!? Why is the world this way? Why? Why do we hurt the people we love and kiss asses of people we can't fucking stand!? It..it doesn't make any sense! If this is all there is to Life then what's the FUCKING POINT!?"

She gasped at her own words and gave way to another powerful session of unadulterated sobbing.

"I'm sorry, dove."

His apology was sincere. He never wanted her to understand. He never wanted her to know. And now, She did. He wished he could take it all back. He wished he'd never written the apologetic goodbye letter that had led to this conversation when she discovered it prematurely. He wished he'd just done it privately. She might have gone a lifetime wondering why. Instead, she would go a lifetime knowing. Another lose/lose scenario for the books.

"Just go," She commanded without looking up. "Just get. The fuck. Out. I need to be alone for a little while, ok?"

Honestly, it wasn't the reaction he was hoping for but he supposed it was as good as any. He turned and silently walked to the door, opened it, looked back once, and exited her apartment.

-Haunter