Love lies bleeding

She'll be in an apartment across the Atlantic Ocean, checking her email from the handphone registered in a name other than her own, so that she can have conversations that he doesn't listen in on. She drinks half a bottle of alcohol a night and wishes things were different, wishes she was who she thought she was. She hates herself, perhaps a little. Perhaps more. But she loves him more than she hates herself. So maybe she'll stay.

Her only failing is to fall in love, and I cannot blame her for that; I've been guilty of the same. And she's strong enough to take all the shit that comes her way when it would have broken someone weaker, so she is still there.

Love isn't supposed to hurt like that. Love isn't supposed to make you feel like you need to walk on eggshells so that you don't push away the one you love, or pull back from what you feel so that they won't hurt you too badly. (Because you know they will, it's just a matter of when and how.) Love shouldn't mean that you are grateful for what should be the bare minimum. Love shouldn't have you on your knees because the weight of loving that person weighs so heavy on your shoulders that you never look up any more.

I don't know what to do, she said, and the look in her eyes was one I'd seen when I looked in a mirror.

She did. She just didn't know if she could do it.


Let's take a photo, she said.
No. We'll take one when when you come back.
An incentive? she laughed.
I tried to smile, but my heart broke for her, a little. The road ahead is going to be hard. I wish it was easier for her. I wish I could tell her there is a happy ending. But I would be lying, and what kind of friend would that make me?

I hope she is there when I come back. But I do not think so, somehow.