There's something terribly exciting about those first few months in a relationship, right? Everything seems possible, everything seems fresh, and even fighting was an attractive prospect because afterwards we'd always have angry make-up sex and everything would be great again. No matter wherever it was we went to, everything seemed new, everything was Hy-Brasil, and Lyonesse, and Avalon and Elvenhome. There was magic everywhere, there was possibility everywhere. And Summer's hope was contagious, I believed, I truly believed, that I had hit the mark. That we both had. Those first few months... man. We'd fuck all the time, we'd fuck everywhere. We couldn't get our hands off each other. We were so madly, deeply in love, moved, lifted, lifted higher, by a higher love. But do you know how sometimes you can precisely pinpoint the exact moment when everything starts to fall apart?
Things had started to slow down. Of course nothing stays the way it is as in the beginning, that's obvious. But there was an abrupt drop-off in pretty much everything. Our relationship had been a very relaxed one, we were together whenever we wanted to, sometimes it'd be days without us being together, but there was never any pressure. What there was was a hunger for each other whenever we were together again, almost often at her place. I took Summer to my place not even a handful of times, I know she felt disappointed somehow. My house is far less glamorous than hers, verging on the drab, and I do not have rows of books and records. I sensed she never felt quite comfortable there, so we'd only go over to mine's if she suggested. Over time, though, there seemed to grow somewhat of a distance between us. Well, not between me and her, but rather between her and me. I often felt that she was constantly pissed off at me for some unfathomable reason, and me broaching the subject would invariably end up with us fighting. And god, we fought for absolutely everything. And when I say 'we', I mean I was on the receiving end of a tirade of abuse. Anything and everything would trigger these fights - the way I sometimes chortled at some inane thing we were watching on the TV, or how loudly she thought I was breathing, or how my skin was itchy to her - you name it, we fought, time and time again we fought. Things get weird one day when I'm at her place, and we're ordering pizza. This isn't the sitting snug together on the sofa eating pizza, flirting with each other, abandoning the pizza halfway through to fuck on the floor. No, this is sad us, sitting each on one end of the sofa, while we nibble away at the poor pizza. We barely talk, we do not touch. It kills me that I don't even know why this has happened. When the door bell rings and it's the pizza guy, Summer tells me to gran her wallet and pay for the pizza. I grab it, walk to the door, and pay for the pizza. As I close the door behind me, clumsy me drops the wallet and all her documents and bank cards fly all over the floor. I lay the pizza on top of the table, she asks me if I need any help, nah, I say, let me pick up your cards from the floor. I'm picking them quickly and absent mindedly, but something catches my attention. I'm looking at her driver's license - I'd never seen it before. She looks different, younger. But that's not what tugs at me. No, I see her name. Who the hell is Geraldine?
And she says, 'It's me, silly, but no-one calls me Geraldine, not even my family.' I can safely say I am flabbergasted at this, and I ask her if her family called her Summer as well. She seems pissed off, a fight is in the horizon. She says bitingly, 'No, my fucking family does not call me Summer, they call me Birdy.' What? Who the hell are you? I'm lost for words, I can only manage to blurt out a weak 'Why did you tell me your name was Summer, then? Shall I call you Geraldine?', and oh boy, things go nuclear. 'No you may not call me Geraldine, you fucking idiot.' I stand there, confused, hurt. She sees the hurt in my eyes, she sees the breaking of my heart unfolding before her. Summer sits back on the sofa, and hugs her legs close to her chest. She's crying. There are rivers of tears coming out of Summer. Her tears are becoming a sea. I sit beside her, my head between my hands, and I am crying too. Save your tears, boy, more are coming your way, and soon. Summer beckons me closer to her, I hesitate. I'm still hurt. She holds out a hand for me to hold, I do so tentatively. She grabs it eagerly, she grabs it like she used to. She takes a big, deep breath, then says, some notes of despair in her voice, 'I'm late, you know.', she shakes her head and begins crying again. I ask her if she's pregnant, she shakes her head again, and looks at me. 'I hope not, I don't want to have children. Certainly not with you.'
I asked Summer why she would say that, did she hate me that much? She says no, she loves me, she says sorry for what she said, says she fucked everything up. She loves me, says she, but there's no love here, there's only a study in despair, my heart shattered and my soul rent. I'm getting up to leave, I want to walk away, I don't want to be here now, she yells at me. She says if I go that's it for us. It's up to me. There's such a chasm between us now, such an unreachable distance gulfing both our bodies. We are drifting away. That's the first time we ever broke up. Summer and I didn't talk again for about two weeks. I legitimately thought I'd never hear from her again. Then I get a text from her, she asks if we can just talk. We can, of course we can. She tells me to open the door, she's outside. She'd been sitting there mustering the courage to send the message. As soon as I open the door, I see her sitting on the floor, sullen. She looks tired and sad, like the light had fled from her eyes. I kneel before her, and wrap her in my arms. I can't escape her. I can not. She hugs me fiercely, and talks softly in my ear, 'I missed you. And I'm not pregnant. Sorry.'. We'd had some of the big talks, sure, but we'd never talked about kids, or moving in together, nothing of the sort. We just figured we'd cross those bridges when the time was right. We get back together, of course we do, but this creates a pattern that will last for a while : we fight, we break up, we make up, we fight, we break up, we make up and so on and so forth.
I'm... I feel I'm getting weaker. Tired. Like butter scraped over so much bread, it's running thin, my heart is running on empty, not empty of love for Summer, but emptied of strength and will to do this anymore. I'm exhausted of the bickering and the constant fighting. There's less and less of what makes us 'us', and sometimes it feels like we're not 'us anymore, we aren't the synecdoche we used to be, we're not parts of a whole, we're parts of a hole. But Summer pulls me closer, always, she brings me back, her siren song far too strong for me to resist. This goes on and on and on. I'm losing myself in you, Summer. I'm losing myself. I'm losing.
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