Until it hurts (Five minutes freewrite)

marie-jay (61)in #freewrite • 6 years ago (edited)

Sometimes the faint trail of perfume left by a passing woman is enough to bring back the scent of her skin, leaving him reeling and gasping for air. At times like these, he can almost feel her soft body pressed to his, as it did when they woke up together with her curled into his arms. Her safe space, as she used to call it. He clings to the wall, feigning a dizzy spell, until the pain subsides. Not that he is ashamed of his weakness, no, he cherishes it, he longs to feel her in his arms again. The mind knows it's just a trick of his imagination, but his heart does not and that's all that matters. That sweet moment when you feel butterflies of anticipation to the stomach, he craves that as much as he craves the pain that swiftly follows, the pain of remembering Angie won't ever be in his arms again.

Those are the good days - when an echo of a girl's laughter or a glimpse of some woman's golden locks are enough to send him back to the time when there were two of them or when the two of them were just one. The rest of the days are an endless struggle to keep the two of them together, if only in his mind. The dreadful days when he wakes up to discover he can only remember her eyes, floating in front of him on a blank face, a grotesque Angie mask, a mockery of the woman she was. He feels like slapping himself when his stupid critical inner voice manages to squeeze in a cynical past tense. 'Angie is! Not was! Is!' Sometimes he does slap himself, when there's no one around. The cruel voice just laughs at him: 'Truth hurts, doesn't it?'
He knows how to shut it up though and bring back Angie. He has many friends to help him drown out that stupid voice. People like him, who know what his pain is like. Sometimes he likes to mouth along with Mick Jagger 'I still love you, baby', but it takes an enormous amount of willpower to ignore how stupid the whole song really is. He'd never say goodbye to his Angie, even if it drove him crazy. When he feels her fading from memory, he goes for the hard stuff, the 'still lovin' you' kind of stuff, over and over again. Until it bleeds. Until he doubles down in pain, until his own misery paints her face in exquisite detail and she's right there in front of his eyes.
On a good day, Angie would allow to be summoned by a softer song. 'Still got the blues for you' and she'd smile to him, that shy little smile of hers, just the corner of her mouth slightly raised when she'd see him waiting for her in the street. She wasn't one who abandoned herself to public displays of love, their love was strong enough to have no need for witnesses.
There, it happened again - 'their love is strong enough', he tells himself angrily as he bangs his head against the wall. Fuck, the orderly is right there, he saw him hurting himself again. He knows that's against the rules. Wouldn't do to have patients all black and blue on Sundays when their folks come to visit. He smiles apologetically to the burly orderly. 'It's all good, I'm sorry, really'. He hurries to one of the chairs by the window and pretends to be quietly playing on his tablet, no need for them to know about the background music, no need for them to know he and Angie are still together. If he behaves himself, maybe they'll let him out someday. He could go home and wait for her.