Eternity

When I arrived, she was sleeping. The period of sleep is one of the few times when she looks peaceful. Her whole world has always been chaotic and scary and wrong. At night, if she finally could drift off, she could escape the cruelty in her surroundings and the dark, dark pain within her. Some of that pain I caused, and the devastating thing is that it didn’t have to be that way. It should not have been that way.

I met her a couple years ago and seeing her was like seeing a million beams of light shooting off throughout the air. I never bought into those old clichés but I did with her. We met for business reasons, yet there was nothing business-like about our time together that day. Long stretches of time would pass and all we would do is just stare into each other’s matching blue-gray eyes. Everything and everyone around us just fell away – I’ve never been so focused, so in tune, with another human being in my life. I felt so sure that I could love her completely and helplessly forever. And when our meeting was over, we whispered goodbye. Neither of us wanted to say goodbye. We probably could have just run off together right then, leaving our lives behind. With her, I wanted to start new…because she made me feel new.

It didn’t turn out right though. Her feelings for me built up more and more until they were threatening to burst her from the inside out. So she told me how she felt…she told me about her life and how rough it had been. Personal things that in a normal situation one would never share with someone for months or even years. But this was no normal situation. This was incredibly explosive, wild, adventurous, pure love. She confessed how she felt about me and how she had never been with any other man, had never really wanted to. Men had hurt her so bad over the years since the time she was a baby. She couldn’t trust them, but she could trust me. We’d only met once, but she put every ounce of trust possible in me.

And what did I do? I lied to her. I told her that I didn’t feel anything for her and it was all just a misunderstanding. I saw her insides crumble with the sound of my words. The light that sparked out just a few days before was now gone. She wasn’t surrounded in darkness; she was surrounded by nothing. The saddest thing in the world was to see her empty. But I was married. I couldn’t just give up my vows for this unknown. Since we had met, I had spent my time either fantasizing about her or feeling guilty for not having those thoughts about the woman I married. I was not the kind of man to have affairs…I had to let her go. I had to watch her walk away again; this time there were no whispered goodbyes. There was just nothing again.

We saw each other a few times after that, but we never spoke. Our eyes would always meet in that intense gaze, but she was still empty. And I was empty too. My marriage failed, ironically because my wife had an affair. All I wanted was to be with her, but this time it wasn’t my marriage standing in the way. It was myself. I couldn’t handle being hurt again the way my wife had hurt me. Now I was the one hating women. I took it out on her, treating her so coldly that I’m sure she must have shivered whenever she thought of me.

Some of her friends told me over time that she still wasn’t interested in being with anyone else, that she was still fixated on me and had to have me. I just could not make the move. So she and I suffered everyday; I wasn’t willing to jump first, and she was too scared to ever try again. What did I do to that poor girl? I was the only man she ever felt anything for. I imagine she spent whole days or nights just wondering what was wrong with her, how could her instinct be so wrong, how could she survive another second like this.

Now as I lay on her bed, I can experience what I have dreamed of for the last three years. Her warmth radiated inches off her body. Her almost black hair was scattered around on the red satin pillow. She looked so perfect, my only regret being that I couldn’t see her beautiful ocean-colored eyes. I lay as close against her as possible, but she didn’t feel a thing. I tried not to think about the pain that awaited her tomorrow morning. She would inevitably get the news from a friend…that I was in a car wreck while driving around in the middle of the night. It was a deer of course. Her breath will catch in her throat as she awaits for those words she knows are coming yet she prays she will not here – that I’m gone. It was over as soon as it happened.

She’ll fall to the floor, and everything will be spinning. Any hope she had for us to be together…whatever “what if” or “maybe” or “one day” she had made up in her head will crash and burn just as I did. She’ll wonder if maybe she had done something different, done more, or done less, maybe we could have been together and none of this would have happened. I could have been asleep with her after hours of making love, instead of driving around narrow country roads at midnight. God help me. We could have been so happy. I could have made her so damn happy. The last few years should have been years of unimaginable bliss instead of days upon days of walking around in a daze.

The pain she will feel in just a few hours, I caused.

The pain that she will feel the rest of her life is because of me.

Knowing what I’ve done to her would kill me if I wasn’t already dead.

As I left my body, I didn’t go towards any white light or tunnel. I didn’t go down to Hell or up to Heaven. I went straight to her. Here I will stay forever, whether she will ever be able to feel me or not. I can wait…what else do I have to do? One day she will join me, and I pray her soul will forgive me for what I did to her in life. I won’t give up though – I have eternity to fight for her.