One Week Ago

2025 is here and one of my focuses for the year is finding the joy in writing again. That begins with daily writing practices. One of my specific writing goals is to hone my skills in interiority. Interiority focuses on a character’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Everything that’s happening within them, and their responses to the world around them. This short story uncovers the inner world of an anxious, obsessive character who’s just gone through a breakup. It’s not the most uplifting story to start off the new year, but this is the character that came to me with a story.

It’s been one week since I walked away from the love of my life.

I finally had him. He stood there in front of me, offering everything I had ever wanted. All I had been asking for since I first met him. That’s when something strange happened. My intuition hit me over the head with a forcefulness unlike any I had ever experienced. Something had been niggling in the back of my mind recently, but I tamped it down. The whispered words continued to taunt me, but I pulled the rose-colored glasses perched atop my head firmly over my hazel eyes.

My intuition, that gut feeling, had never spoken to me so strongly. Run, it said.

It’s now 1:41pm. The rain coats my window for what feels like the hundredth day in a row. I’m sipping halfheartedly from a bowl of lukewarm soup that no longer interests me. I don’t like the taste anymore, but my body is still hungry. I don’t have the energy to feed it further. The energy to get up from my couch eludes me, too.

It’s a peculiar thing, this sorrow I’m feeling. How do I reconcile what I thought I wanted with the reality of what happened? How do I combine the vision I had of him, a perfect painting in my mind, with the other him, the real one? The one that contained all the darkness he concealed so well.

He hid it, but deep down, I knew it was there. It was why I was drawn to him in the first place. My subconscious spotted it, and instead of warning me off like an aggressive guard dog, it beckoned me closer. You know how some people say that when you feel an instant spark, it’s usually too good to be true? Usually, the “spark” you’re feeling is just the response of your trauma and red flags connecting with theirs. What I’m experiencing now is the truth of that statement contained in a liposomal pill that’s been absorbed into my bloodstream.

It’s 1:43, and I never work from my couch this early in the day, if you can call what I’m doing working. My head hurts, my throat is scratchy, and my eyes are puffy. From sickness? From sadness? From PMS? Mentally, I’m checking the 'all of the above’ box. All these emotions are swirling around me. Pushing, pulling, begging. The clip in my hair feels heavy. My fingers are shaky and uncertain. My heart is beating fast. Anxiety. I’m intimately acquainted with the feeling. Briefly, I find myself wondering if I know how to spell the word ‘acquainted’. I type it out on my phone. It doesn’t look right, nor did it feel natural to type. There are no red underlines though, so I can trust it is correct in a way I don’t trust my judgement right now.

Am I a good person? I think so. I try very hard to be. Sometimes the line gets blurry when someone is upset with me. If they’re mad, I can’t possibly be a good person, right? That’s how I felt last week, when the final straw had been drawn and it was time to put myself first. Even if it shattered the careful complacency to which I had grown accustomed.

I strive to please everyone to the detriment of myself. But when I am selfish, then I’m a bad person. He told me that once. He said the words, “You are the most selfish person I’ve ever met.” He said it to hurt me, but he wasn’t entirely wrong, either. I live in this duality. How can I be a good person without destroying myself in the process? I can’t please everyone, I know that. I am not always going to be the best friend I can be, or the best version of myself, with everyone I meet. But I want to be. Am I a good friend to myself? Why is my heart still pounding?

It’s okay to not be perfect. Do I really know that? Do I believe it? I am a perfectionist. That’s another thing he told me. “Perfection doesn’t exist, Tay. You’re so fucking impossible to please.” The ghost of his words floats around me. Am I really that impossible to please? Or was he beginning to chafe against the standards I held? They weren’t high, but I clung to them with the last shred of my dignity.

Maybe the answer is no, then, I don’t believe it’s okay to not be perfect. Or at least, not yet. I’m still learning to accept the truth that perfection doesn’t exist. I type out the word ‘pounding’ in my Notes app now. I roll it over on my tongue, tasting its solidity. It’s underlined in red, and that doesn’t make sense. I know it’s spelled correctly. I’m a very good speller, actually. I spelled almost every word correctly during the spelling unit in second grade. I struggled to spell the word ‘friend’, so my parents made up a song to help me remember it. I can still sing it to this day. On the final test, I forgot the ‘m’ in pumpkin. I wrote ‘pupkin’. I still remember these things and every stupid thing I’ve ever said or done. Every moment I’ve ever been uncomfortable or embarrassed. The memories are vast. They haunt the corners of my bedroom at night when I can’t sleep, lingering in the shadows like the monsters I used to be afraid of. Maybe I’m the monster. There is so much pain and suffering in the world. Mine is so insignificant comparatively.

I admire artists who share deeply personal anecdotes in their medium of choice. I struggle to put the bad things I’ve done into words. I flinch at the pain I’ve inflicted upon others. I repress the pain others have inflicted upon me. I excuse it and forgive it, but I never forget it.

I push people away while simultaneously giving them too many chances. I let men I don’t care about treat me poorly and stay for far too long. That’s why my heart is floundering in the aftermath of our breakup. From all this rubble a truth emerges: I did the right thing for myself. I thought he was the love of my life, but I’m still learning what love really is. And so is he. He told me I broke his heart, that I made the biggest mistake of my life and would come crawling back to him once I realized this, but I know he’ll be fine long before I am. More truths bubble up from my depths: I cherish people that don’t reciprocate my feelings. I trust the wrong people. I’m impulsive. I care. In fact, I care a lot. Maybe too much.

Sometimes I feel a loneliness so profound I dream of packing up my belongings and moving to another country. Somewhere that values the slow, mundanity of life. Perhaps Italy. Because that will solve all my problems, obviously. River by Joni Mitchell just started playing and her floaty voice is the perfect background to this… ‘reverie’ is not the right word but it’s the one that barged into my mind without knocking. It’s the perfect soundtrack to this *gestures at everything with hands*.

Currently, my left toes are wrapped around my right ones, curled together like sea otters when they’re sleeping. It’s called rafting, according to Google. I don’t know why I do that. It’s like my left foot has a mind of its own and attaches itself to my right one unconsciously. Subconsciously? I’m questioning everything today. It’s 2:07. The time is ticking by slowly, slowly, slowly.

My head still hurts. My throat is still scratchy. My eyes are still puffy. The smell of my soup wafts toward me and I wrinkle my nose. My appetite is still gone. I’m still on my couch. It’s 2:22. I need to get back to work.

His name appears on my phone. I know I can’t read it. Won’t read it. We’ve cut the string that’s kept us bound. It’s time to move on, to discard the safety net we’ve crafted over the years. We’ve strangled any love that could have bloomed with our combined toxicity.

One week ago, I said goodbye to who I once thought was the love of my life. I open my phone and scroll to his name in my contact list. Block caller.

I get up from the couch.