Your hand was on my throat, clenching it tighter as I tried desperately to gasp for air, while your other hand stroked my shoulder, gently and lovingly keeping me conscious for just one minute longer. Just to feel your touch against my skin, to feel the ferocity of your emotions spilling out through your every pulse and betraying that you knew this was wrong; but that you couldn’t stop it either.
Ever since the very beginning I couldn’t help but be drawn to you. Your unstoppable anger and your knee-weakening caress. Every time you breathed I could feel an invisible string pulling me closer and closer to you and every time you bashed me with your words it tied me up so I couldn’t get away.
We were like magnets, me and you. So helplessly drawn together but destined to pull each other apart.
I broke you, I watched you quiver in agony as I threw justice in your face and you thoughtlessly tried to convince me that you didn’t deserve it – even though you did. And your pain fuelled my fire to go at it for another round of madness with you, to rip your skin apart with my nails if only to bring you closer to me. I didn’t love you; I loathed you.
No matter how hard I tried, I would still find the memory of your crawling in between the bedsheets at night, and like a terrified child I would run to you, only to have the door slammed in my face.
The next day you would beg for a kiss and I would slap your arrogance back into place. I threw threats at your feet and watched you curse me and everything I ever was. Then you would whisper ‘you are mine’ and you knew that I had already answered ‘I am yours’.
Until one day I woke up to find my body covered in scars; your malicious acts of horror were no longer invisible to me. Only to the rest of the world and to you. You had begun to overpower me and suck out the life from inside me, constantly leaving me behind like a bust up doll.
I started to hit you back with the same strength, bit by bit I released myself from your clutches and when I stumbled and got carried back to you, I started all over again. Your hold on me had become the most prominent feature on my face, undeniably controlled by the force of your touch and you wouldn’t stop until you dragged me down to the bottom with you.
At night I would hear your voice calling for me and that string, carving its path around my heart, trying to bend it to its will; and it was so easy to just let it. Your name rushed through my veins and I breathed only what air you’d give me. It would’ve been simpler to just let you run your course until you had finally taken what was left of me.
But you weren’t going to win this time.
I sliced open my chest and pulled; unwrapping your string, one inch at a time. Feeling it trying to slither back to its place until I began to pull harder. When all of it was finally out, I gasped for air.
It was the first time the air that filled my lungs didn’t belong to you and your hand had finally let go of my neck. I knew I wouldn’t be the same after that. Exhausted and paralyzed I kneeled and let the air consume me and tell me that I don’t have to get up until I decided to.
I laid there and smiled at myself for finally being free of you.
The other pole of the magnet had become stronger than you and, even though it still gravitated towards you at times, you could no longer leech on to me the way you once did. You are nothing but a fading scar now; a treasured one, a hated one. That’s the only way you remain mine and that’s the only way I want you to.
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