People come and go in everyone’s life. Sometimes they seep in over weeks and months, others rearrange everything around us in a single explosion. Some of them stick around for a while. They become friends, lovers, maybe enemies, rarely partners. They’ll be with us for a summer, some will spend years by our side.
We think we control when we let someone go. We think we decide when to leave or when to send someone away, but really, we’re just drifting. Drifting in the current of events, and by the time we finally reach shore, there’s nobody left beside us. We can’t even pinpoint when the distance started. When the silence became uncomfortable. When the shared air started to hurt. One moment we were still together, the next we weren’t. Somewhere between those two moments, invisibly, we lost everything.
I’ve already shown you what random chances brought an all-consuming love into my life. Now it’s time to show you the other side – what can lead to goodbye. This is a story about how something that started as forever comes to an end.
As night rises above me…
The accusation won't let me dream.
When I close my weary eyes
Your gaze strikes me in the face.
I go blind in the fire of your eyes,
But slowly the sun rises again…
Without you I am nothing.
The trees moan the scent of dead flowers
And the landscape shudders,
Something has ended, something hurts.
Funny thing – even though she was the one I thought would stay with me forever, I can’t even remember for sure what year we broke up. Hell, I can’t even remember the month. Our memory blurs the painful moments to make them bearable. Dates get lost, details blur together, and what remains is just a feeling. Some diffuse pain, but you can’t quite say why anymore.
That day it was really cold, the kind of cold that hurts to breathe. We didn’t really fight. Something happened, some small thing I brought up – something so insignificant now that I can’t even recall it. And then she said, “You can leave.” Just that. Calmly, almost indifferently. Like she’d decided weeks ago and was only now finally saying it out loud.
And I left. Put on my jacket and left. I could still hear her calling after me: “If you leave now, it’s over” – but somehow I didn’t stop. Pride? Proving I was right? Anger that she was the one who said it? Who knows… I walked down the cold street and tears ran down my face. Without words, I knew it was over. I knew this wasn’t a fight we’d make up after. This was a cut. Clean, deep, final.
What did I do after that? No idea. The next image that stuck: I’m sitting in my friend’s car, listening to Pierrot’s “Yesterday a Dream Shattered” over and over. Barely in any condition to function. I wasn’t crying anymore. Just sitting there staring out the car window.
I knew you longed for the light,
You needed the sparkle
I just realized too late
That this much is enough, nothing more
A dream shattered badly,
A thousand shards rolled away
And always when I least expect it,
The past stabs deep into me
There's no argument and no chance, I know the final word
But tell me, when night comes, what will I dream about?
We drove around for hours. Aimless circles through the city until finally – “by accident” – we ended up in front of her place. My friend got out of the car, looked up at her window where the light was on. Then disappeared into the stairwell. I just sat there. Waiting. When he came back, he only said:
– She packed all your stuff into a box. She’s sitting on the floor crying. She didn’t even look at me. Didn’t say a word.
And then I got it. We both felt the same way. We both had the same burning pain inside us. But we still couldn’t do anything with it. We couldn’t go to each other. Because something was already broken. Something that can’t be glued back together.
Months later, for her birthday, I bought the newly released ‘Karcolatok’ album by Ákos. (Hey! I’ve got the year! 1993!) I went down to the bar where the party was already going on. The others surprised her with a group gift. I was holding the cassette in my hand, about to give it to her, when she pulled the same album out of her bag.
– Put this on! – She asked the bartender. – The track ‘Hello’.
Hello, hello, I didn't disappear,
I just traveled to a distant planet with closed eyes.
But slowly the eye opened,
It still shines on you,
A tear trembles in it,
Because I see that I'm blind.
I'd turn my thoughts into words, but I'm afraid you don't care,
Unfortunately the sentences won't come together,
I didn't come here for this, I didn't want this,
I only got hope for the journey, I'm the eternal traveler,
That all my sins are forgivable.
All my sins are forgivable...
Hello, hello, I'm the same old me,
I came to earth by mistake, and I'm afraid I'll get stuck here!
Believe it or not, I'll make it home someday,
You won't see me anymore, you'll miss me...
Silently, I put the cassette back in my pocket. Went home. I was free.
That summer, I married another girl. More random chances brought someone into my path that I’d already lost once but found again. I thought this time it was for sure. This time for real. But not her either, not for good.