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hat had happened in just a few hours? What had caused this sudden change of attitude, not proper of her? Has no sense. As much as I observe her eyes, her body language... they do not tell me anything. I do not know what to think right now and therefore I have no idea how to fix the situation. Gentle words are not worth, sweet looks... Nothing I do or say has any effect, and she keeps choosing more and more hurtful words. And it can only be for one reason: she does not feel the same for me as I feel for her. Everything was a lie from the beginning. All. She has managed to deceive me how naive I am, I did not realize.
And it is not that feelings are not similar, but that she does not feel anything. At all. Has she been hanging out with me? Have I only been a simple transitory entertainment? It cannot be; I am never wrong. I can interpret what people think and feel due to my profession and why not say it, genetics inherited from my mother. And it cannot be that on this occasion I have confused the signs. But with her everything is always too difficult. I was not able to know what she felt, even myself, until a few months ago. Maybe now I was wrong too. And yet something tells me...
«Now solve your problems, I'm tired of been forced to deal with your bad times. And it's not worth it ».
It is not worth it. I do not deserve it for her. My God, it cannot be true. This cannot be happening in reality. I shake my head almost imperceptibly and blink a couple of times. I am not dreaming. She is sitting there in front of me, as cold as an ice floe and at the same time with her cheeks flushed and her eyes glassy. But nevertheless her voice is firm. She does not hesitate at any time to say those hurtful words. She does not mind saying all that. She does not care about me?
I answer something, my lips move but I do not hear my own words. It is something that usually happens to me when I am with her. She is so painfully perfect... Her features have not hardened in these fourteen years. She is still that sweet and smiling little girl that her own parents introduced to me. Until that very day my life had been completely black. Not a gray tone, no talking about whites. But it was seeing that smile and my eyes began to distinguish different tonalities little by little, as long as she was close. And now she wants to take that away from me, she wants to blind me after finally coloring my life. That is not possible. No, it's not possible... No...
«I am thirty years old, I am single and without family responsibilities. You already have almost forty, in full divorce and with a daughter. It's over".
It’s.
Over.
...
She just hit my chest with every word she said. The final thrust, to the heart. That “it's over” has twisted my entrails and shattered them. I can put my hand in my chest, take out my broken heart and give it to her if she wants it. It is useless to me. I do not want it to be useful to me.
I no longer see her black eyes, she has turned her back on me and goes to the door never to return, I am sure.
Why, why, why.
God God God.
Why...
Instinctively I bring my hands to my face, rubbing myself and trying to wake up once and for all from this kind of nightmare in which I have totally lost control. And I need to have control over my life, I only ask that and it seems that for months I have only given up control to whoever is destroying me inside and out without mercy.
Why did I decide to divorce? Why? I began to lose control at that precise moment, yielding completely to pure chance. I tried all these years to stay away from her. It was dangerous for me. When I arrived in Salamanca, I had very clear objectives. Hide from him the best I could until he died. And it would be then when I would reclaim what was mine. And things would be as they had to be. And yet this little creature was sneaking through every pore of my skin until I belonged to it completely. Every day that passed by the office, each visit to her parents, every moment that crossed with me... I tried not to even talk to her. Something hurt inside of me when I did it, as if her words were poison that crept through my ears and came with astonishing simplicity into my bloodstream. But I could not help it. That drug was consuming me in small doses and needed more and more.
I did not love my wife, it is true. I felt respect for her as the mother of my daughter but I did not get married because I was in love, much less. There was a kind of vital calendar inside me that told me I should do it. I knew it was better to marry someone I did not love, it would be easier. And yet that lovely little girl was still there. Forever. At every moment, at the least expected moment. Even with each new year that I fulfilled, she always seemed to be there with a gift for me, even if she did not know what day it was my birthday and never congratulated me for it. I do not like celebrations and of course I did not need to celebrate the fact of spending one more year alive, since that it did not bring me any happiness. But since she crossed my path, everything changed and I really wished that day would come, just to see how she gave me a bright smile just for me.
I let it happen. I let my feelings prevail over common sense and ended up deciding that my life was not worth living without what people called love and that until she came I did not think I was capable of feeling for a woman. My daughter did not deserve to grow up in a marriage like my parents'. Of course, it was not nearly like what I experienced but it did on what had to do with love. My little daughter was beginning to realize everything and it was she who ended up making me take this decision. “Daddy, how did the prince know that none of them was Cinderella?” She asked me one day, as soon as I finished watching that movie. “Because no one else could fit that crystal shoe, little treasure” -I explained caressing her beautiful coppery locks. “But her stepsisters cheated and could have cheated on him” -she replied with all reason. «You are right, but the prince knew that none of them was his princess». “Have you found your princess, Daddy?” -She asked again with that insistence that only the most curious possess. I nodded with a smile and covered her body with her blanket so that she finally fell asleep but asked again. “How did you know she was your princess?” “Because she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen, with that honey-colored mane and that smile...” “But honey is brown” she told me, frowning at her tiny scowl “Mommy had her hair of another color before?”
A simple stupid comment to a question from my daughter about a children's story. That was the precise moment in which I realized where I had my mind and my whole being at all times. I was not describing her the day I met her mother, but the day I met my real princess. For which just at that moment I knew that it was not possible for me to continue with my life as I had until now. And now it was she who was trying to strip me of this life that for the first time I had begun to believe that I could have.
“Are you no longer in love with me?” I can say without my voice breaking into fragments so small that it is impossible to understand them in their totality.
“I've never been, Jorge, how could I have been?”
Never. She never has been. I try to hold my breath and hold a hand to my throat as if that would prevent tears from flooding my eyes for the first time in my entire life.
I just entered the event horizon of a gigantic black hole as soon as she left the office; she leaves me. And I stay in this luminous darkness that looms over me, already seeing the zone of singularity where I do not care and stay trapped forever. Without her. Without my princess, nor my life. Without future or possible salvation.
I could not confess how much I loved her from the first moment, how much I love her and how much I could, in a future together, have come to love her.
And now nothing matters or nothing will. Nothing comes back into my life and I see how the light that always came back to me with its mere presence, gives way to a terrible darkness.