I have never felt love.
The emotion of love always eludes me. People say it feels like a giddiness that originates from the gut.
But I've never felt that way. I had a family once but I have never felt any love from them. I couldn't feel what they felt. I couldn't understand.
That's how I grew up, I would frequently think about love, I had heard how people felt love with another.
That growing intimate with someone could fester love so I tried it.
I randomly picked a girl from my school and asked her to be my girlfriend.
To keep things simple she agreed, we lasted together longer than I expected.
I expected her to breakup with me in about a weeks time, I expected her to make up excuses to try and distance herself.
But none of that happened. I didn't understand why, why she hadn't left, why she didn't say anything.
I wasn't exactly subtle with my emotions. Everytime she asked me if I loved her I responded truthfully.
At first she was surprised, she had tried to understand why, why I didn't love her.
So I explained why. She wanted answers and I didn't see a reason to keep it from her.
Then she grew to like my answer, she had begun to understand me, to understand my lack of love. To try and change that fundamental part of myself.
That part of myself that was engraved into my very soul. And it worked, slowly and surely I started to care more and more.
I started feeling more, started to see the world in a different light.
The world I had seen before was a mundane world of grays and dull colors. But then slowly almost imperceptibly so, my world gained more color until I couldn't even imagine a world without such vibrant sights.
That deficiency in my soul was slowly but surely being healed the longer she stayed with me, the more I interacted with her the more I could feel.
Then, one day she asked if I loved her.
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And I responded with a yes.
It has been years since then, from the first time I asked her out in middle school to now in college we had been together the entire time.
I smiled more, I felt the world in an entirely new way. I felt on top of the world, that I was to luckiest man in the world.
That I was so lucky to have met her, to ask her out and how she agreed.
I didn't just see the sunlight as light I felt it , I felt how it would gently caress my skin, how it would spread a gentle warmth throughout my body, how it felt so absolutely gentle to my senses.
But
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Usually your luck runs out, and I've used up all of mine.
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Later, during my last year of college I received some news. It tore through me, it tore though my heart at what I heard.
She had cancer.
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It crushed me, it made my entire world crumble.
She was my world, my hope, my pillar for love. She was my everything, and now I had found out that she was sick.
I tried to deny it at first, tried to hide away, to block out the truth like a child, I felt pain so overwhelming I couldn't do anything.
I went through every stage of grief during that moment, then I saw her.
She was happily sitting on her hospital bed, looking out the window as she hummed a disjointed tune that had no meaning.
She didn't notice me.
I didn't want her to notice me.
I wanted to stay there, to just watch as she hummed her unique tune. The more it went on the more uniform it became. At first it was disjointed with tunes randomly dropping and lifting.
Then months passed, seasons changed and so did we.
I would still attend college classes.
While she would wither and wilt in her hospital bed, her hair fell out at first.
But she didn't care.
Her frame became paler.
She didn't care.
She became weaker, barely able to walk without winding herself.
She didn't care.
It seemed like nothing phased her. She still gazed at me with those loving eyes, she would say how much she loved me everytime we met.
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I started skipping classes just to spend more time with her, just to spend an extra minute in her presence.
To feel her love, to make sure that she kept safe, I was anxious, fearing that I wouldn't be there in her final moments.
That I wouldn't hear her final words.
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One day something felt wrong. I couldn't explain it so I went to her. I asked her about it, but she didn't answer me.
Everytime I asked she would redirect the question. I didn't push, I didn't want to.
I didn't go to any classes that day, I only stayed in her room the entire day.
There was something I wanted to ask her, I had to before it was to late. I had to know her answer, I just had to.
So before closing I asked.
I got on one knee.
And I asked if she would marry me.
Tears streamed down my face as I asked, my anxiousness and fear all swirled together into an every growing hurricane of emotion.
I waited with a baited breath as she wheezed, her breaths coming in short, gasping breaths.
She looked at me, looked me straight in the eye before she answered.
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Her voice was close to a whisper, her response was almost drowned out by the mechanical beeping of medical instruments.
But I could never not-hear her voice, even if she was in a roaring crowd I would hear her.
"Yes"
That was her last words before she passed, her last words were her love to me, her acceptance to my wish to marry her.
I would never have the chance to marry her though,
I attended her funeral, it was small. Only filled with close friends and family.
I felt something in me change as I saw her being slowly lowered into her final resting place, I felt something delicate inside of me splinter and crack.
I felt so hollow, so devoid of emotion but I still cried, I still felt every emotion I had gained from my time spent with her.
But nothing stayed the same afterwards, slowly the world became gray again, the sun became an empty ball of light in the sky again.
Something fundamental had broken in me that day, I couldn't tell what did but I could tell that I could never be repaired by another.
Then even more years passed, I finished my college classes and got my degree, but I didn't feel anything from it.
I didn't feel any accomplishment from it, I didn't feel any happiness, no joy. Only a void that originated from my heart.
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After that I drifted until I landed myself a well paying job.
And then I saved my money, only spending it on essential expenses until I saved up enough to buy something.
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Something that would always remind me of her, I bought myself a ring.
It wasn't anything special, just a metal band with her name engraved on it, embroidered with her favorite gem.
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I wasn't happy anymore, I couldn't feel anything anymore, I had returned to my old emotionless self. I had tasted the view of a emotionful world but now I was thrust back into the clutches of my dull emotionless one.
Every couple I saw left my heart aching in what reminded of her. Every day reminded me of the good times like a demon coming to haunt me.
Everything reminded me of the times I spent with her, of that happiness that had changed me. It kept gnawing at me like an infection that grew stronger by the day.
Until one day I couldn't hold it together anymore.
The pain I constantly felt continued to fester inside of me, threatening to take control of me and do something.
Until that threshold had been crossed.
I had done something,
I had done the one thing I had never thought of.
I had a plan, I would go to work and act as normal. Then I would return home and kill myself.
I just couldn't do it anymore, my life had become an inescapable hell without her. I-I just couldn't hold myself together anymore.
I couldn't see a reason to continue living, so I gave up.
I shut myself out from the outside world, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I cut myself.
I did everything I could think of to myself, but I couldn't feel anything. My lack of emotions had bleed into everything else.
So I hung a noose from my ceiling in my apartment and hung myself.
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Authors note:
I tried to put my emotions into this chapter but I don't know if it worked.