Failing at Someone
I turned around and left. Not one of those teary soap-opera scenes, not screaming or smashing vases. Just sun on the pavement and me walking away. Last time I looked her in the eye.
It’s easier to show up at Berghain drunk and naked and covered in shit with a rabid dog and somehow get the bouncer to pat your shoulder than admit you failed at another person. Someone you put time and emotion into. Love, even—not the crushing kind, not something that owns you. Something lighter. Something that felt real.
We’d hug like the world was ending tomorrow. Wine until the bottle was empty, smoking and talking for hours, making these huge plans that seemed possible when you were high enough. Fucking until the windows fogged over and the weekend disappeared outside. It was simple and it mattered and I loved it.
The problem: I was the only one. Out of two people. And I didn’t even want to feel this way—not until that last day did I admit that feelings were actually fucking with my brain. Being in love is fine. We’re all dead inside; when something real cracks through, that’s something. But not for someone with the emotional range of a kid and a video game addiction.
What’s worse than failing at someone is knowing you’re not the first. There’s an entire line of us. Men who couldn’t get through her walls or who did and got destroyed because she’s fundamentally broken in ways she can’t see. She has beautiful hair. A beautiful face. Beautiful feet. Nothing in the middle.
So you invent reasons for your own unraveling. Why you can’t think. Why you’re jealous of every other man. Why you show up at parties drunk and yell and make insane ultimatums and cry the whole drive home and lose it over completely mundane shit that doesn’t touch other people but is destroying you.
Then you catch yourself sometimes. A song you like. A day that doesn’t feel like drowning. KFC that doesn’t give you diarrhea. You take a deep breath. Tell yourself tomorrow’s normal again, like it used to be. Jerk off to her picture one last time—promise—and tell yourself you’re fine.
The absolute worst part? Finally accepting she’s not to blame. She never lied. Never promised anything. Never loved you. Never understood why you’re acting like an electrified lunatic, turning nothing into everything. Because I’m Bert and she’s Ernie, and I’m the one who made this a tragedy when it was never even a story to her.
I thought it would end with me finding her somewhere degraded and finally having a reason to snap, to become a cautionary tale in some dark place while sad music played in my head. Instead I just woke up one morning and decided. Today. This minute. It stops. The pressure. Her face. My collapse. Mine. So I turned around. And left.