I was crying. I was always crying wherever he was concerned, whether it was because he was being nice to me or whether he was being cruel to me. This time, it was the latter, according to my dependant teenage heart.

He was driving me home, and then going ‘away’. I didn’t ask
where. It was just abroad, for ten days. I watched his hands on the
steering wheel through my misted up eyes and felt pathetic for
depending on another human being, especially one so volatile, so
utterly and completely.

I didn’t want to go home. It wasn’t even home anymore, it was my
parent’s house. My home, for me then, was wherever he was. I wanted to scream at him to turn the car around, to stop it, to plead with him to take me along or just not go all together. But I couldn’t.
Suppressing the tears that were threatening every time I looked at him was difficult enough – speaking would have made my voice falter.

So I remained silent, with the tears pouring down my cheeks.
It wasn’t just that he was going away, he was missing some
anniversary of ours. I was heartbroken, he should have been there,
smiling joking, reminiscing. But no, he was ‘away’, absent, lost.
We pulled up outside my house and he walked me to the door. I stood on the step, not wanting to go inside, thinking that if I just kept him
here, made him see me, really see me, he wouldn’t go. He’d come
inside and tell me all the things I needed to hear. We talked, civil,
useless things. None of the things my heart was aching to hear. I felt
deflated.

He grabbed me roughly and kissed me, I could taste my tears and his
beer. I felt nauseous and pulled back, he looked at me in a manner
that made me shrink away. Then he suddenly turned and walked back to his car.

“I love you.” I called after him, in vain. I didn’t get a reply – just heard the ignition fire, saw the break lights flare through my tears, and he drove off.

Alone, again. I sank to the floor and cried. My head began to hurt,
and I made my way inside. My parents were perplexed as to my sudden reappearance in their lives, but didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.
All my mother said was that I looked gaunt. I took that as a veiled
insult, glared at her and returned to my bedroom. I slept a lot those
ten days. I was exhausted after constantly being on my toes, afraid,
nervous. I drifted around in my own world, not feeling, not really
speaking, not noticing or noticed. Just existing. I taunted myself
with horrible scenarios in my head, where he would fall for some
foreign beauty and never return for me. It was torture being with him,
torture being without him. I didn’t know what I preferred: the
purgatory of being alone, or the terror of having him around.
The time passed slowly, but eventually, he did return for me. When I
saw him I could feel my heart filling and life returning to my dead
bones. I could feel the cold going away, the loneliness shrinking. I
ran into his arms.

He seemed distant. I was disappointed, I was expecting the lover’s
reunion, and all I got was him. But I didn’t let it show, and it was
obvious he was revelling in the attention I was giving him. The sharks
smile was wider than I’d ever seen, and I resented him. In my head I wished him dead.