Tug of War

It was a shabby apartment, but that isn’t why I left him.

I looked around our small studio and stared at the once vibrant paisley wallpaper. Now faded and torn, it exposed a dirty green wall that probably once lit up this room with the sunlight. I imagine it became dull quite quickly. I looked away and gathered in the rest of the room. It was empty, but the ghosts of furniture sets lingered as long as there were indentations of couch feet in the carpet. Along the wall loomed a dusty, unused fireplace. How I would have loved to burn the place down.

He turned his head to look at me. Probably worried by the flames in my eyes, said,
"Kayla, I don't know what I'd do without you."
The flames extinguished as quickly as they arose. With a tug in my chest, I earnestly responded,
"I'll never leave you.” I looked around the studio once more, “We can work this all out."

I walked him to the door and kissed him goodbye as he left to go hang out with friends. I do love him. I think.

I glanced over at my little brother, lying by the fireplace, coloring in a coloring book. I wanted to go see the colors. I craved it like sugar. He was lying on the floor since we only had one chair. I was sitting in it. It was a green chair,- imagine that. Green like the walls and propped up with rusty metal legs. It was then when I started imagining the apartment walls decomposing and falling apart, the floor crumbling away, eventually the entire place caving in and taking us with it.

I was startled out of my thoughts when the phone rang. It was my Mom. Hearing her soothing voice, the kind of comfort only Mothers can offer, caused me to break down and admit how miserable I was. The dead apartment, with no bed, no food, no friends. There was no life here for me. As my Mother, she insisted that I come back home, live with the family, and start everything over.

Start is all over? Rewind it all? That sliver of hope was like being stranded at sea for days and finally glimpsing a bottle of water slowly floating towards me. I just needed to paddle over to close in the distance. I was so thirsty to have meaning and purpose in this empty life.

I packed what little things I had quickly in a cowardly attempt to leave before he got home. I felt two things at that moment:

Relief. Relief that I would drink that water soon- I would gulp it down. Relief that I would no longer be tangled in whatever mess I had gotten myself into. The web was already unraveling.

That other feeling was guilt- that tug in my chest. But that’s what always keeps you there, even when you know you shouldn’t.

With a box in my arms, I stepped out into the hallway. He was staring right at me. Before he could reach the realization of what I was doing, I said, “Let me put this in the car, and then we can talk.”

Did I come back? I shouldn’t have. But I walked back into the apartment and he was sitting on the green chair. Speechless, he looked around the apartment, and avoided looking at me. I approached him and sat on his lap. As I pulled his head to my chest, I could start to feel him cry. That is when the tugging started. He whispered in my ear, “You told me you would stay."

The tugging pulled tighter and I felt like I was losing grip on my end of the rope. He looked up at me, pleading with his eyes, and I knew he was pulling as hard as he could. It was at that moment I knew I had to let go of the rope.

“I’m sorry.” And I simply got up, and left.