Dear Sol

Dear Sol,

I’ve been ignoring you for four months. The dictionary definition of Modern Day Torture should include being left on ‘read’, shouldn’t it? I could pretend I never received the messages, but I know you know I did. I never want to ignore you but what am I supposed to do with the stones you’ve put in my pockets? They’re heavy and not one of them mine to hold.

You’re a mess - so dramatically flawed and precarious a person - there is literally no reason to feel anything towards you. Loving you was the dangerous soft spots in a pond, frozen over with ice, that crumbled under my ice skates, swallowing me without warning. I wish I’d known better.. than to love you, that to trust you.

First love makes weird alchemic changes to your brain and you forget about logic. It sticks to the roof of your mouth; you try to wash it down with cheap wine or the next wasteful, whirlwind relationship. Thing is, 8 years have spun away with us and I am not the same person I once was.

Life changes the shape of a person. Like a cloud it morphs and folds into itself, whispering into other configurations. They disappear from view, float out and then back into the frame, but doesn’t the day feel infinitely better without them? My life feels infinitely better without you. Without clouds, the sun can come out.

Why haven’t you changed? I can’t get rid of you or the feeling of drowning underneath our relationship. Yes, we need clouds for rainfall and evaporation and the growing of gardens, but who seriously enjoys cloudy weather reports? Okay, some people do, but I don’t. I like spaghetti strap dresses and golden skin and not having to carry an umbrella. I want sunshine, and you.. you aren’t my sun.

You were once.

Sol, such a seductive name. I’d orbit around your atmosphere of danger and anarchy, around the mistakes I found endearing, your badly inked tattoos and walk of plastic confidence. Your mixture of drugs-and-a-day-job was something I’d never known. Coming fresh out of school, living in a tiny village full of farms and empty country lanes, I couldn’t drink up enough of your city-life-chaos.

We had the same hectic tendencies. The same urge to self medicate with cider and cigarettes and companionship. I didn’t know myself to understand when enough was enough, just like you never recognized when enough was enough: too much Ketamine, too much Captain Morgan's rum and zero self respect.

We were a pair of reckless, bubbling teenagers who thought we could taste the freedom of adulthood. Bohemia without the need for clocks or curfews, making graffiti canvases in the garden believing we were living like artists, trampling to free parties under bridges and bags of acid on our first date. It made a magical summer romance. A potion of poison; perfection for a book but it was real life. My life. Fiction could cope with abandonment, with being second best to a party drug, with being drowned in a frozen lake, flung into a world not made for me. But I couldn’t cope.

So I left. Broke my own heart doing it, broke yours too. I left you because I could see what would happen if I stayed: Taking drugs everyday, not going to work, falling into an accidental pregnancy and coasting down a dungeon lifestyle. The memory of us never went away. And clearly, neither have you.

But this has to stop. You can’t keep contacting me whenever your life turns to shit, whenever you wish it went differently between us. Sending me messages of over-confessed love that you failed to demonstrate when it mattered. What exactly do you expect me to do? Fling myself across the river Avon and save you from yourself? You’d relish if I forgot all my aspirations and self discoveries, to hold your hand while you continue to flip and flail around in uncertainty.

It breaks my heart to think of your sadness, of the despair at your situation but.. that’s every inch your creation. How long can you go on blaming outside forces without wondering if you’re at the helm of your life, drowning everyone you love, and yourself, in your soft icy weak spots?

Do you seriously think I’ll suddenly make your life better? You’re convinced I’m the golden glue for all the broken parts of you. But I can’t fix you. I can’t forget about the burning sensation in my bones when we were together. And I can’t ever let you swallow me in cold, empty promises again.

Signed,

the girl who refused to drown.