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Part 1: Innocence and Heartache.
His name is Jacob Tucker. I love him, yet I want so badly to hate him. Hate is so much simpler to admit than love. When you love someone, you want desperately for them to return the love. When you hate someone, you have no choice but to return the hate. In hate, no one gets hurt unless it becomes physical. In love, all lose. The one who loves is broken. The one who does not love is forced to break the other. It is always so.
It would be simpler to run. If I fled somewhere where nobody knew me, hid my face beneath a hood and never spoke, I could outrun this pain. I would never have to see Jacob or anyone again. Nobody would know what I looked or sounded like. It would be a painless existence. No love, no pain. The two go hand-in-hand. Remove one, you eradicate the other; it is simplicity itself. As far as lonely goes, I can survive.
There is a gaping hole where my heart once was. Nothing fills the empty spaces. Nothing, I think, ever will. It pains me. I can feel the hollowness in my chest. To my love, I can never let go, but I will never pull him close. I fear that this suffering will never end. I fear that this icy cold numbness in pain will last forever and all my life.
My heart breaks not, it shatters. And the pieces disappear, leaving only the hurt of their parting.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” These are foolish words from a foolish woman. Nobody who had ever experienced heartbreak would write those words, flaunting the love she is so fortunate to have, holding it over all our heads. Mrs. Browning, what of those of us who have loved, lost, and wished we had never loved at all, no matter what anyone quotes? What of us?
How much to I want to drop out of reality right now? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact, I’m tired of existence. I don’t want to die, maybe just go crazy and live in a fantasy world like all the traumatized teens in books. Maybe I’ll just settle for never having existed. Yes. I wish I’d never been born. I mean, what difference would it make? I’ve never done anything important; I’ve never saved anyone’s life. I should just step in front of a bus. I’ll join God in Heaven, He’ll show me how wonderful I am because He loves all His children, and I’ll get my heart back.
I’ll run away to someplace beautiful and silent, somewhere far away. I’ll live on charity and what little work I get. I’ll sleep in barns, cuddling up deep in haylofts until I fall asleep, safe as the baby savior in his manger. I’ll never see this place again. No familiar places to plague my waking hours, no memories to haunt my dreams, nothing. I’ll never see Jacob ever again. I feel so far away, so displaced from the regular dregs of life; like the world is going on around me super-accelerated, and I’m here in my hazy white dream-world watching everyone else like a movie out of focus, or a photograph gone blurry at the edges.
I wonder if he would come to my funeral. Would he spare my headstone a second glance as he walked through the memorial graveyard on Halloween? Would he tell the bit of skirt clinging to his arm to scram for a second so he could pay his respects? Would he cry? I don’t know. But if he cried, I would cry with him.
I would run to the mountains to take my life. It would be bloodless; no need to spoil the nature around me with the garish red of my passing. When the authorities find me, I will be lying on a bed of flowers, looking much like the faerytale Snow White, clothed in black with my dark hair spread beneath my head and shoulders like a pillow. His picture will be in my arms, a note also. The note need not be elaborate, just a simple thing. “My heart aches no more”, it will say. At my funeral, everyone will file past my coffin, silently dealing with their grief. In the reception, they will stand in groups and quietly whisper about how beautiful I was and am; how odd it is that I look peaceful now at last. Once they lower my body into the ground, everyone will leave but my parents, Jacob’s parents, and Jacob. For the first time, all that has happened will hit him and he will begin to cry, standing in front of my grave. I will cry with him in Heaven, and then the rain, gently, will begin to fall.
