What the night brings

“It’s me, Folarin. Please open the door.”

It’s been exactly three days since I said goodbye and walked out on Nina during an argument. Three days of asking myself why I did what I did and three days of cursing myself out because I’m a fool for not putting my emotions in check.

“I know you are in there; open the door.” I can see the light from her television and her silhouette on the couch eating something. My guess is cereal, either cornflakes or moon and stars. She hears me knocking and turns off the television and light. We’ve fought in the past, but this time, it feels like something broke when I walked away, and I’m scared I ruined us.

The door opens, and behind it, she stands in a pink hoodie and her bowl still in her hands. Nine is quiet; she doesn’t say a word or move a muscle. This moment is not going the way I planned it in my head, and my heartbeat is increasing with every tick of the clock. I know I have to say something, and I did prepare a speech, but looking at her now, I wish we were not in this position, to begin with.

“How’re you?” I try to break the awkwardness between us, but she’s still mute. There will be no small talk today, so I better start talking. But since she opened the door until now, she has not looked at me.

“I’ve been thinking this past few days about you, me, and us. I don’t want to go days without talking to you, without you talking about your favorite movies or new celebrity crush. You make me soo happy, and I do not want to lose you. And I know walking away wasn’t the best option; it was stupid, and I can’t change that, but I want us, I want us to work.”

She takes a deep breath and sighs; it’s never a good sign when she sighs. Nina drops her bowl of cereal on the table beside her, and it’s cornflakes, but this time it’s with milk. When we started talking, she hated milk with cereal. It’s incredible how people subtly change without us noticing.

“Folarin…” She speaks to me for the first time in 30 minutes; my name no longer carries the rhythm it does when she calls it. It sounds like just another name. It doesn’t feel like the name she called when she tried to threaten me between laughter and snorts. It didn’t sound like the name she called when we spoke into the dead of the night. My name always came out like poetry from her lips, but it sounds like broken promises tonight.

“… you are confusing me. What do you want me to say? You walked away, and it was fine. I decided not to think about it or do anything about it because I was not ready to deal with it. But if you think I’m going to pretend that nothing happened, I can’t, and I won’t.” Her voice goes up a few pitch higher than it usually would, but there are periodic cracks in her voice; it tells a story her words do not.

Nina thinks about things a thousand times before making a decision, so I know she means it when she says she won’t do something. It is one of the many things I love about her, and it might be why I never get to be in her life again. Trying to change her mind is futile; this is a lesson I’ve learned one too many times. But I don’t want to lose her, so I’m going to fight for this.

“We were arguing, things were getting heated, and I didn’t want to say something that I’d regret. I agree that walking away wasn’t the best decision I could have made at that moment, but I was overwhelmed.” At this point, I’m scrambling for words; my legs are weak, and they fumble under pressure. So I grab the bench we sit on when we talk into the dark of the night and laugh at my lame jokes.

“No, don’t say that. You made that decision at the spur of the moment, and when people do that, it means they’ve been planning to do it all along. I cannot pretend like that did not happen; I would not. And it’s okay; you do not owe me anything. I know none of this feels good now, but it’ll get better. You made a decision; I’m only asking that you have the courage to see it through.”

These words pierce every fiber of my being, my chest is tight, and my head spins in circles. I don’t want to follow through on a decision I made when I wasn’t thinking straight. This can’t be the end, right? Relationships do not end this way. Someone usually cheats or mistreats their partner or something else, not this. I have to hold my leg in place; they shake at an embarrassing speed.

“I’m not asking you to pretend like it did not happen. It happened, and your feelings are valid, but I know we can move past this. Nina, I want you in my life, and this is not where I imagined we would find ourselves. It hurts, and I’m scared as fuck. I know I am to blame for where we are right now, but I know there is still hope for us.” I’m fighting back the tears from flowing with everything I have in me.

“You really think we can work things out? Do you think things would go back to being the same? I’m yet to process what happened. It’s always going to be at the back of my mind, and I’ll look at you and see someone that walked away from me because we were arguing. You left Folarin; you left for three days. You left me alone.” She steps out of her door for the first time and sits beside me.

“When you met me, I was closed off. I wasn’t letting people into my life, and I told people nothing about me. But you came in; you showed me it wasn’t okay to be like that; you allowed me to open up to you. I became comfortable with you. The deal was always to communicate, and when things became hot, you lost it, and you left me.” She laughs; it’s not funny, but Nina is laughing, and I can’t stand that. I know this is pure pain.

“ I know you are hurting, and I’m hurting too. But I know together we can move through this.”

“I’m not hurting Folarin. I’m repressing because the alternative is a no-no. But I still want you in my life.” I try to hide a smile; these words give hope.

“But again, I’m not okay, and I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t want to. So yeah, this is the end of us.” My heart is breaking, and I can feel every crack and rush. I don’t know what to say. When I drove here from work today, this was not what I imagined would happen. She stands and heads towards her door.

“Are you going to say goodbye?”

“I don’t understand. Goodbye, how?”

“I don’t know. When people leave, they say goodbye or something like that.”

“I don’t know what to say, Folarin. How about you?”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

When my stomach ties itself up and only wants enough food to ensure my survival and my tongue gets bitter, you’ll think I’m sick. I’m not, but I understand the sentiment. My chest feels heavy, I’ve been going to the gym for a minute, but I can’t still carry this weight.

My phone has sent me into many mini heart attacks lately, or something like that. This feeling is what I imagine heart attacks feel like. The mobile vibrates, and my heart accelerates at a numbing speed; I can’t move, and breathing becomes a little complicated. The ideal thing will be to silence my phone, but the constant worry of missing something makes that impossible. I want the world to observe a continual moment of silence; I only want to hear you speak.

When I feel this way, I tend to go to bed early. I know what the night brings to a troubled soul — Ideas. Ideas are great, but you know they need a clear head to be well-executed. An idea in my trembling hands is nothing but another medium to cry since tears don’t fall anymore.

You would think early to bed keeps my monsters at bay, but the night whispers to the day, and when I awake, it leaves a note on my bed. There are some things you can never run away from no matter how you try, but trust me to delay the inevitable until my limbs give out.

I call my friends and ask if they would like to meet, walk around town, grab an Ice cream or just be with me. I’ve become more outspoken, and telling jokes comes naturally to me. My daughter has caused ripples in the fabric of time, louder than they usually would be, and they last a few seconds longer. There is something that pushes us to mask pain in giggles and company.

You know that feeling when your intentions are clear in your heart, but somehow, your twos don’t make four. So I’m here between consciousness and sleep, questioning everything I said and did.

I know none of these feels good now, but It’ll get better. I also know my heart will break a thousand times. When I think it is whole again, a memory will create a crack, and before long, my heart will break into a million pieces over again.