The end of the affair
18/09/2007 09:18  - (SA)  

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David Moseley

There are worse things that can happen; death by enraged penguin, disease from rabid hamster, being forced to listen to a series of live radio phone-ins all day (actually, there's nothing worse than that), but there is nothing quite as heart-breaking as the untimely demise of a searing, pulsating relationship.

There's no better feeling when you've found someone you can lie next to at night, whose smooth back you can caress gently, smother yourself in their intoxicating scent, hold them while you fall sleep and feel that all is right with the world because you're together.

And you think it will last forever, that the spell will never be broken, that an endless supply of good times wait around every corner for both of you. And then it ends. It shudders to a halt like a scene in a movie where the mother waves goodbye to her children at the school gates, and as she turns to drive off blindly a 300-ton logging lorry reduces her life to a pile of blood stained match sticks.

Though relationships often run out of steam, it's those that end with all the warning of a lightning strike that hurt the most. After you've walked away or hung up the phone you can always take comfort in the fact that the immediate aftermath is always the same.

You lie miserably awake at night. You can't sleep because you're stuck recalling the comforting routine of previous nights, happier not so long ago. Your eyes sting and your gut feels hollow.

You wake up, stumble through a dreary haze, and throughout the day previously insignificant triggers set your memory ablaze with all the golden moments that made your time together shine like the blissful early-morning sun.

A candle by your bedside

A train ticket stub on the floor, a chocolate stain on your pillow, a candle shoved into a beer bottle (romance at short notice, gents. It's a win because the lighting is less harsh and you can never look too soft with a candle by your bedside that's sticking out of a Jamaican Red Stripe Lager beer bottle).

Every time, when your mind wanders back to the soft touch or the disarming goofy grin that could raise your spirits so effortlessly, your heart sinks a little deeper. You recall her shimmering wink that dulled the noise in a crowd, the sign of a shared joke or just a small show of affection.

It's impossible to block out everything that made your relationship so right. And then you're back in bed at night, wide awake, aching to pick up the phone, and regretting the stupid things you've said earlier in the day.

You don't mean them. You never do. Anger is a vicious, snarling beast, its bark surging with venom, its bite the most cutting acid. But it's not so simply locked away with a chain. Discretion and composure are not its bedfellows.

And as you lie there, in the heavy darkness, you wish you could take words back, swallow and digest the words that would not have crossed your lips a day earlier. You wish you could stay cool and eloquent, and offload the sentences that cling stubbornly to your lips, that you know love doesn't dissipate overnight, that you understand why things have happened the way they have, that the corners of your mouth still turn upwards in a warm smile when you think of the person who's just stepped out of your life, that acceptance will come, in time.

But sometimes your tongue is just tied too heavily and what you wish you could say, what you've repeated a thousand times over in your mind, never really comes.

Send your comments to David.

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