Image: HERE

The reason I blog is that I have a passion for writing; blogging is not all that I write. I mostly write short stories, but I have been working on a novel for a while now, and I've been known to write lyrics and poems, too. Mostly, I keep my short stories to myself, because I get self-conscious about sharing my writing, but sometimes, something just begs me to be shared.

This is a story I wrote just last week - last Monday, in fact - but it's a story that I have had in me for a very, very long time. It's a story I've been dying to write, and that i've just never found the way to. And then is just... sprang in to being, fully formed, as this.

It's by no means perfect, but that doesn't matter. It's the sentiment that matters - and as it's Valentine's Day, it seemed like an oddly ironic time to post it.

I hope you enjoy - call it my antidote to the romance of the day! Any criticism, or thoughts, you may have would be very welcome.

Image: HERE

Twisted, Tangled Hearts

Amy Claire Thompson (Copyright, 2011)

For you. For both of you.

“I didn’t know you cared.”

As soon as the words pass through your lips, you wish that you could swallow them back down again, but there they are, floating off into space, and into his consciousness. It’s too late. You’ve said it – and, judging by the shocked look of pure hurt on his face, he has very definitely heard.

It’s not really that you didn’t know he cared, though, is it? It’s more that you didn’t want to burden anyone. It was your web of lies, carefully built up over several years, that was causing you pain, and it was no one else’s to deal with. You’re far better at helping other people than you have ever been at helping yourself, and putting actual feelings into actual words is a genuinely challenging thing. You’ve never been good at it – but especially not since that.

You’ve been hurt, and you’ve been changed, but you’d thought you’d buried it all, but good. And then suddenly it all came flooding back.

Well, technically you have to admit that that’s wrong: the word ‘flooding’ implies a surprise, a flash, a rapid change. It’s been trickling back for a while now, this twisted web of lies, and it’s not his fault. Of course he cared; of course he wondered.

The first crack in the facade was caused by a song, as it so often is, for you. For so long after everything happened, sad songs brought it right back, but two years is a long time and you’d thought it had finally healed. You were wrong. One lyric, one song, and one name which sounded so, so much like the culprit’s began the slow descent into everything you’d wanted to avoid. It caused the first chip in the new life you’ve been living since you put it all behind you, and it made that first, solitary tear fall. Even now, five months on, it still causes your breath to catch in your throat, and it still makes you ask questions you thought you’d left in the past.

And, from one crack came another, and another, and another. That one day, every year, that has always served as a reminder, and the then reappearance of the one person who really understands, because they went through it all, too: suddenly, reminders surround you, so that everywhere you look, your past is staring in.

And then there was someone else – someone new, and someone else you forget how to pretend when you’re around. There’s someone you feel such a connection to that you can’t help but let it all spill out. And spill it does. The stream becomes a deluge becomes a torrent, and it’s washing over you, your dirty little secret. It’s out there, and it’s so real. It’s something you absolutely have to get past to make anything else ever work.

Except, it’s not that easy. It’s deep and it’s dark: it’s tangled and tortured and an affair of the heart.

The thing is, though, like never before, you now have a reason to get past it all. You can’t help but drop your guard with this new person, and drop it you do. In your mind, maybe, this is the key. This new something could end it all – but he, the one who has always been there and who has always cared, doesn’t know that. When it all comes flooding out on his watch, you bite back. You tell him the cryptic bits, and you hurt him, even though you don’t mean to. Because of who he is, “sorry” is not an option.

So you write it down. And you keep writing, like you always have and you probably always will, until it goes away.

Maybe, all of it is a blessing in disguise, this tortured, tangled truth, because it’s drawn you to someone wonderful, and let you live through words.

Here’s hoping you understand.

Image: HERE. Edit: Me.

And yes, I hate whiney girls going on about how their break-ups have broken them irrevocably, too. The story you just read is probably not what you think it is.

Happy Valentine's Day, however you choose to spend it - whether it's by sending a card to your best friend (like me Rachel and Carla), or with your partner, or by generally hating on such a "Hallmark Holiday"...

However you spend it, I love you.

PS - because I'm posting this right at the start of Valentine's in the UK, yesterday's Sunday Snapshot hardly got a look in. Stop by for a glance if you have time.