Here’s how things went that night.

It was The End.

Obviously, I didn’t realise immediately that it was The End, it happened so suddenly.
We had been dragging that relationship for a few months, like trailing beasts that tiredly give up from overexertion. A huge burden to bear.

I just wanted to eat my heart out.

I don’t remember where we were going that mid-January evening.
I hated January.
It had always been the worst month of the year for me.
Anyway.
We were in the car, heading towards Porto Sant’Elpidio, a sleepy-friendly seaside resort in the Marche, in central Italy.

Now I am speaking in the present tense. I wish you were there too.
When you speak of The End, you must speak to It in the present tense, it is a kind of code, a sign of respect because things that fall open up gaps where you never imagined you would uncover them.

I think it’s one of our excursions, even though we haven’t seen each other much in the last two months. She says it’s my fault, I think it’s her fault.
Ever since she came back from America, she has done nothing but tortures me with her contradictory behaviour.
One night, a couple of weeks before, her ex came to the restaurant where we work to have dinner, and asked her if she was free and I overheard her telling him that she was free that night. I was furious because she was with me that night.
When we left the restaurant, I told her that I did not like what she had done behind my back.
But she was never one to apologise, it was as if everything she did could never affect others. I think she believed that I didn’t really love her and that I only wanted to be with her because of her physical appearance.

Lately, she didn’t believe anything I told her.
She thought I was cheating on her.
She thought I was cheating on her with a mutual friend just because we worked together and had known each other much longer. Ari, this mutual friend, was one of my greatest teachers in life, but apart from human affection, there was never anything else between us. Quite simply, Ari and I understood that behind every aspect of life, there was a lesson and we often talked to each other about it.

I mean, she doesn’t believe me, but I stopped believing in us when I heard her talking to her ex that night.

There were stifled words between us, I’m sure of it.
Even when I tried to explain myself to her, even when I told her I didn’t understand, that it wasn’t how she thought it was a situation (whatever was), I couldn’t really voice my truth.

A month earlier she told me that she heard that I was disclosing things about her to people she hated.
I told her it was not true, that there was someone who was putting poison between us. I knew who it was, but I couldn’t prove it. Besides, she is another one of those mutual friends who likes to gossip, to tell other people’s business.
But it doesn’t matter, I’m still the culprit for her.

I’m driving now.
I don’t remember what we were saying to each other. All I know is that she is wearing a skirt, and she still doesn’t accept what I say. I try, but she shakes her head, retorts, and rejects my remarks.
I think: how long have we been going on like this? How long have we been two suns growing cold in the darkness of the universe?
From when she returned from America to that moment, it was five months. But our relationship, without defining any boundaries, has been going on for a year and a half.

We are on our way to a large car park, there is a leisure centre for bowling and other activities.
I stop the car.
We keep arguing, arguing, not understanding each other.
I can’t take it anymore.
And that’s how it ends.
The truth, though, is that it is already over the moment we get into the car.
But now it’s really over, now I decide what’s good for us.

“Enough, I can’t take it anymore,” I blurt out, tired and regretful. The sentence escapes my lips like a breath, delicate and brutal at the same time.
I stretch my arms out to my sides, like when you sit down and are too tired to even think, then stretch your arms out to your sides as if somehow releasing the stress.

The End is always bitter. The End means that afterwards, things will not be the same as before, so there will be an emptiness in your life for a while, a kind of room that still needs to be furnished because someone has just moved out. Not only do you have to furnish the room again, but you also must clean it. We often try to fill this void by immediately looking for a replacement, someone to furnish that room for us, but most of the time this is a big mistake.

Where were we?
Ah, yes. The End.

I tell her I can’t go on like this any longer. I don’t look at her, I stare out the window, and although her figure is not in my line of sight, I know what she does, I know her gestures, the nuances and even the ripples of her manner. I know how she curls her mouth when something bores her, or she disagrees. I know how she rolls her eyes when she is fed up with a situation or bored. I know so much about her that having to tell her that it is over hurts more than anything I have ever gone through in my life.
She, however, agrees with me.
It can no longer go on like this.

When she came back from America, she disappeared for a fortnight and after that, she broke up with me. After another two weeks, we went out together and kissed, reuniting.
Even there, she never knew the hell she put me through when she was away in America. Three months. Sometimes we didn’t talk for days, she said the Internet wasn’t working but I knew she was lying, it was a certainty inside me.

The truth was that I didn’t want to lose her. I cared for her, coz she was the most beautiful thing in the world, she was a beacon of hope, she was clay to make shapes and water to quench my thirst.

But we must learn to let go of rotten situations to allow a new blossoming.

We, that day, in my car, knew that we could never take another step together after that. If we had tried, the world would have split in two, and the Universe itself would have imploded, crushing us. The archangel Gabriel would have descended from the clouds, with his shining sword, to separate us.
We had done ourselves so much harm, that by continuing we would have disturbed the innermost mysteries of life, and they would have come to us to drive us apart.

I do not regret what I did.
I should have told her the things I did not want to tell her back then.
I would have liked to make her understand that I was on her side, not an enemy, but I was unable to do it.

No matter. We moved on and forgot in despair.

I had to let her go to allow her to grow.
She had to let me go to allow me to be a better person.

Sometimes it goes like this: dark love changes you. Rarely can be saved, often it lasts just a round of seasons. Dark love is a lesson that tears you apart, it tears you into so many pieces that you are forced to work on yourself. You must pick up those pieces.

Love as a distant, coveted lighthouse was drowned by waves bigger than us.
We are shipwrecked. We shipwreck.

At the Porto Sant’Elpidio car park, we part.
We give each other a hug.
She returns to her car.
I observe her drive away and then head home.

The funny thing is that she never believed in my love for her, I am sure that even today she has no idea what I suffered. If I told her that I loved her, she would laugh at me. I know it. I know her.

I think she grew up rebellious and lonely because of her modelling experience, which allowed her to start very young in that industry. Besides, we worked for a, let’s say, humanitarian organisation, and we had to follow strict rules and we often followed them trying hard, but the truth was that those situations suffocated us.

We went to the bottom, and that departure was the only way to get back to the surface.
Could we have saved ourselves?
I think so, but we were not mature enough to do so.

I am not one of those who enters into a relationship just to fill an empty space. I don’t stay with someone just out of fear of loneliness. And telling ICY Love that it was over was for me a test of courage, of rebellion. A kind of counterbalance.
Unfortunately, I still see couples today that are built on illusion and are not balanced. We fear loneliness, we fear that there might not be someone else more suitable for us. We end up in an intimacy that disturbs us after a while, but we continue to hold on to it because darkness is like a bright light and hurts the eyes.

After ICY Love I no longer had a steady girlfriend, I went from one event to the next like a meteor. I’m not going to jump into a relationship just because I don’t want to be alone, I’d be wasting my time and making her waste it too. People who do not know their own value, go with anyone, mate with anyone and live in loveless relationships.

The courage to change requires a certain amount of personal growth, which means taking responsibility. And responsibility comes when you stop blaming others for the pain you feel.

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