Severed Feelings

“Savannah,” he says, his voice holding a dull edge that could sharpen in an instance.

The O’Callaghan’s just had that special ability. They could snap in a split second, a complete 180 in the degree of temperament and mood. Imilee had it, her father had it, and, to my dismay, John had it too. More often than not, it was the very reason I dreaded staying in the tiny apartment with him during days in which he pulled out his stockpile of notebooks and pens from the kitchen drawer set aside specifically for them.

Looking up from my seat on the sofa, I see him glaring at me from under his eyelashes. His green eyes dart to my fingers which I’d previously been tapping against the worn arm in my state of mindlessness.

Silently, I pull my arm to my lap and cradle it there to avoid making John anymore irritated with me, and he reluctantly turns back to his chicken scratches.

The sound of his ballpoint rolling over the surface of the stiff notebook sheet fills the apartment and circles my head. Once upon a time ago, the sound had been peaceful, calming almost. When John wrote for a new album it used to be late at night and as the inspiration struck. He’d used to sit up in our bed, lamp light on, and smile down to me between his stanzas of poetry. I’d fallen asleep countless times to the sound of him humming his newly written lyrics and that pen working away.

But that was then. Things were different now.

I feel my eyes scan the apartment we’d made into our home exactly two years ago. The wallpaper was starting to peel away at the corners. A water spot was being poorly hidden by a photograph of the two of us in Maine. It’d been autumn, and the leaves had just begun to fall. My mother had snapped the photo of us, leaves in my hair, color in our cheeks as we’d smiled brightly and genuinely at her. We could have been on a hallmark card; we looked so in love, so invincible, so happy.

There was a spot of paint missing from the spot behind the door where we’d bounced the handle too many times. And next to the door, itself, was a gaping hole where John had lost his cool and collectedness after one long night and too many shots of whiskey. The picture that had once hung there was missing, and would probably never come out of its safe spot under my side of the bed in a boot box that I'd filled with random nick-knacks that didn't fit anywhere else in our apartment.

Heaving a sigh from my lips, I got up and made my way to the kitchen, taking with me the empty and half-empty bottles that had accumulated on the coffee tables.

As quietly as I could, I disposed of them in the proper bin.

It was funny really.

Leaning against the counter and scrubbing my face with my hands at the sudden laughter and tears I was suppressing, I felt myself slowly slipping out of control.

I’d heard that couples in the same situation as us sometimes try to clean up and put on this façade of perfection – that nothing was wrong and that nothing had affected us.

John and I were doing quite the opposite.

The apartment was a mess and my attempts to clean it up didn’t include notifying our landlord that our apartment walls were going to shit from both wear and tear and abuse on John’s part. In fact, we weren’t really holding anything together. We acted on how we felt on particular days.

If John felt like drinking, then he drank. If I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, I didn’t. Robotic was a good way to describe our daily functioning. We floated by, mostly. I’d get up, go to work simply to stare blankly out the window my cubicle was pressed up against for hours and then return home to stare at the television and make dinner in a certain scarily familiar routine.

We’d become accustomed to our latest patterns, and neither of us had the energy to acknowledge that what we were doing was wrong – even if we both realized it.

Letting a shaky sigh escape my lips and feeling one tear slip unwillingly from my right eye, I forced myself to recover. John didn’t like it when I cried, and I especially didn’t like it when I cried.

But it seemed all too often that it occurred lately: at work – in the women’s restroom, in my car driving, shopping. It happened everywhere against my will.

Taking a few breaths that did nothing to calm me, I swiped one last time at my face with the back of my hand before walking back towards the living room.

I had so much to say and yet nothing to say at all as I stood in the doorway, watching John, my friend, my boyfriend scribble away. And I knew that he hated it when I stared at him, that it made him uncomfortable and paranoid and simply annoyed, but the words I needed to say weren’t coming.

“What?” he asked, his voice snapping as he tossed his pen down to glower at me.

I gnawed on my lower lip, thinking over the words circling my head. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to bed.”

Those were not the words I’d wanted to use.

He only nodded, once, grimly.

And I, in return, lingered for only a few seconds more before trekking through the apartment to the room we’d shared.

Not even bothering to change into the silk pajamas I’d bought just a week before, I crawled under the blankets, curling up on the very edge of the mattress.

John never understood how I slept the way I did. In the earlier days, he’d pull me toward him to cradle me against him, the both of us sinking into the middle of the mattress. He’d always complained about my cold feet and I’d always laughed, falling asleep to the smell of his soap.

We’d been so happy, so innocent, so carefree.

Imilee changed that.

She changed us, and everyone who’d ever known her.

She was the catalyst to the destruction of so many lives.