Infinite

Frank is sitting on my couch, looking out of place. We haven’t had time to make the place comfortable, and there are cardboard boxes everywhere.

“He’s been miserable, you know,” Frank says at last, when I’ve anxiously been fidgeting with the hem of my shirt for a few minutes. He’s been watching me, I know, but didn’t seem to know what to say.

“Do you think I care?” I say, anger flaring while I try to sound unaffected. “He broke up with me, so what. I don’t care if he’s miserable. He has no reason to. He got rid of me, he should feel elated."

“You know you don’t mean that,” Frank says, trying to look me in the eye. “You love him, I know you do. Just seeing… this…” he makes a gesture towards my covered arms,”… why would you even do that if there’s nothing more to it than hate?”

I look at Frank for a moment, his worried expression and kind eyes. He shouldn’t be here. I don’t deserve him being here.

"Things like these happen. We fell apart."

"No, you didn’t." Frank’s exasperated face makes me wonder how he can be so sure. “You were happy, Aubrey! Gerard was happier than he had been in ages. He really did love you. He does love you. I’ve known him for a long time, and he wouldn’t be able to hide that from me.” He sighs. “You have to sort it out, it can’t go on like this.”

“It only lasted for a few months, and that’s nothing compared to…”

“You know it wasn’t nothing", Frank says.

What can I do? It was all Gerard’s decision and apparently, he didn’t think I had a say in it. He’s not old – if anything, I’m the one being too young.

Being eighteen is a perfectly good reason to get dumped. I can’t believe I ever thought it would work out.

And the few months we spent together weren't really that special, were they? I fell in love and now have to fall out of love, people do it all the time. Sometimes it just takes a while before you recover. Sometimes you obviously have to fall deep before being able to get back up.

So I tell Frank to leave. And even though he protests and tells me that Gerard and I need to talk and I shouldn’t go around moping but try to do something about it, I don’t want to listen.

He’s miserable, you know.

Sitting on the floor by one of the empty walls in my room, I close my eyes briefly. A sudden memory of black hair and that beautiful smile flashes before my eyes. It hurts. But it’s been ages since I could recall what his face looks like, so it also brings some sort of serenity.

There’s my mother’s face. The disapproving look.

She was right. After all this, she was right.

People do this all the time. Someone breaks up, and the one left behind cracks.

In the end, Gerard was what my whole existence was about. There was the band and I loved being in a band, doing what I love and meeting new people and evolving as a group as well as individuals – but at the end of the day, what I loved the most was to pick up the phone and call him. Just to hear his voice. To know that he missed me just as much as I missed him.

Just knowing for a second that somebody loved me just the way I am turned me into this mess.

I look at the scabs and cuts on my left arm. There were a few from before I met Gerard, from when I was sixteen and the world mostly seemed like a dark place. From that time when Red had found new friends for a few months in freshman year, and I was just the weird girl who followed him around.

Experimental cuts, at first. I didn’t try again until this summer. It felt kind of metaphorical to destroy something, just like Gerard destroyed us.

Just like I destroyed myself by loving him.

But it doesn’t feel like that now.

I get up from my position on the floor, suddenly feeling my legs again after thirty minutes of numbness. Grimacing as the blood makes its way through my limbs, I make my way into the kitchen. The razor in my hand ends up in the trashcan.

Maybe for good. I don’t know yet.