“I can’t do this anymore.”
There was fear, and sadness, and a whole part of me screaming inside that I was crazy, but I couldn’t stop it. I was done. My heart did one final frantic leap and begged me to dig, to find myself again, and I knew I couldn’t do it here. Not in this life with the man so determined that I was a sick little liability who needed to be a smiling nobody on his arm, nodding at his every word.
He didn’t wake up until I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. He started before he rolled on over, and my voice sounded unsteady as I said it again.
“I can’t do this anymore, Sebastian. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I just can’t do this anymore.”
He laughed. He actually laughed as he flicked the lamp back on. He was still laughing until he saw my face, and then he tensed, propping himself up on one arm with his eyebrows pitted.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
I was up and out of bed before I could answer him. The room was a blur as I pulled some clothes on and took the overnight case down from the top of the wardrobe. I piled in the first couple of items hanging up, and he was up and out of bed right after me, following me around as I got my things together.
“Jesus Christ, Anna. What the fuck are you doing?!”
“I mean it,” I said. “I’m sorry, Seb, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do us anymore.”
And then he got it.
He forced my case from my hands and threw it on the floor, and his cheeks were red, his mouth a scowl, eyes glaring as he backed me up against the wall and told me I was fucking insane.
“Have you forgotten the fucking obvious?” he asked me, and his voice was ice cold. “Have you forgotten just how much of a fucking mess you were before I picked you up from the floor and gave you a fucking life again?”
No, I hadn’t forgotten.
I’d never once forgotten in all the years we’d been together. Not in the least because he reminded me regularly – as did everyone else in our world.
It panged hard. The guilt. The fear. The self-doubt that rose up inside and made my chest heave as I stared right up at him.
But tonight I couldn’t stop myself. Through everything that begged me to gain some rational thought and climb back into bed for the night, I just couldn’t choke it all back down. The need for release. The need for life. For soul. The need for flesh on flesh that truly meant something to me.
“Is this about you wanting to be a disgusting little slut again?” he seethed, and my cheeks scorched under his stare. “Don’t think I didn’t see you goggle-eyed over those freaks in the club who needed to get a fucking room. Is that what you want? Huh?”
I hated the way his mouth twitched as he scowled. His hands reached out to grab at me, and I hated that too. He pawed at me like I was a cheap whore. A whore worth nothing.
“Come on,” he spat. “Tell me you want it like this. This is what he did to you, isn’t it?” He squeezed my tit hard and I batted his hand away. “That pervert prick who left you in a pitiful heap with his bullshit. Want to be a slut, do you? Want to soak yourself in filth? Want to take it like a desperate bitch like you did with that vile piece of shit?”
I didn’t want it like that. Not from him.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Oh, but it’s what you really want, isn’t it?” he hissed. “It’s you wanting to chase that sick excuse for fucking I pulled you away from. That sick excuse for you I pulled you away from.”
I shook my head, but there was that embarrassment blooming. The humiliation at knowing just who I was when he came into my life.
But at least then I did know just who I was.
He picked up on that embarrassment and rammed it home.
“You think there’s anyone else out there that would pick you up from the dregs like I did?” He laughed a vile laugh. “How much of a kinky bitch do you think you’re going to look when you’re spasming in bed and waking up in a pool of your own piss, Anna?”
“Please stop,” I said. But he didn’t.
“You were in a shitty fucking state when I met you, and you’ll be in a shitty fucking state all over again without me. See what your parents think if you tell them you’re going it alone. See what the whole fucking world thinks of your selfish bullshit.”
I hadn’t seen him like this for years.
It was the drink. The drink and the dent in his pride.
It wasn’t love.
It wasn’t him seeing me as the person I truly was and loving me for me.
It wasn’t freedom. Not to be myself. Not to be a woman who chased her own destiny.
I was wrapped in baby softness cemented hard by constant judgement; I just hadn’t wanted to see it. I was plugged into scrutiny masked as caring – answering a running commentary on everything I ate, and drank, and thought, and did. I was boxed in on all sides and smiling through it by telling myself it was my life now. That it was all I was capable of now.
He really had been there for me where other people had left me to scrape my way through my own shit. He wasn’t wrong on that score.
If only I could believe we were real, him and me. That what we had really was all that mattered.
But how could it be?
How could he be in love with someone who didn’t really exist anymore?
“Tell me you love me,” I said. “Tell me like you mean it. I don’t think you’ve said it in years.”
“What?” he asked, eyes still glaring.
“Just say it, Seb. Tell me you love me and mean it.”
But he didn’t say it.
“I take care of you, Anna. I put up with your medical crap and make sure you’re okay every fucking day. I keep you from being an utter state with yourself. If that isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what will be.”
He stepped away and tutted, and looked at me like I’d gone mad.
Maybe I had.
I was questioning my own sanity, and wondering myself what the hell I was doing when he finalised my thoughts for me by laughing that cold laugh of his.
“Just get back to fucking bed and sleep it off, will you?” he said. “Have you been on the wine or something? You’d better not have been fucking drinking.”
Maybe I should have been. Maybe a couple of glasses of wine would have seen me asleep in bed and immune to the feelings spinning deep.
My tears were brimming as I picked that case back up from the floor. I could barely take a breath as I summoned the last of my words to the man I’d pledged my heart into marrying.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said again. “I mean it, Seb. I can’t do this.”
“Your brain really is a poor excuse for one tonight,” he said, pacing the room. “This is madness. Total fucking madness. They need to up your fucking meds and get your stupid head back in gear.”
It may have been insanity, but madness was better than living an illusion for the rest of my life. It had to be.
“Goodbye, Sebastian,” I told him.
“You’ll be back when you realise what a stupid cow you’re being,” he said, and got back in bed.
I left my engagement ring on the counter next to his keys, and then took my first shaking footstep into a whole new world.