Goodbye green-eyes

It was difficult telling him that she needed to stop seeing him entirely. Even if it was meant to be just for a while. Especially since they got along so well and were close, and nothing had been wrong the week before.

But she bit her tongue and finally set a date by texting him, and told him that she needed to ask him a big favour. Aside from that, fair or not, she hadn't had the strength to give him a hint about what this was about and how sick she felt. She'd made herself believe for over a year and a half that everything was fine, but as always, a drop overfilled the ocean. And she knew that if she did nothing, the friendship they had would die of poisoning (the poison being her inability to say anything). So this was probably the equivalent of a good throw-up. Painful, messy and horrible, but absolutely necessary.

She'd spent most of the week feeling increasingly queasy and trying to complement the pain in her head with intense physical exertions, all in anxious anticipation. Tears made unwelcome visits at work and in bed at night (making breathing impossible). When D-day rolled around she was physically exhausted, but felt like it was time for a cross between a boxing match and an audition. She dressed in black for the occasion, but thought better of it and wore the outlandish checkered sneakers. If there was nothing offbeat in her appearance to laugh at, she wouldn't feel like herself.

The talk itself was for some reason less tearful than she'd feared (which made her preparatory purchase of a maxi-pack of tissues the day before a bit ironic - but there were so many left that it was laughable. One down, 179 (!!) kleenexes to go). She prepared herself by writing it all down, just for herself to get it in the right order.

The weakened brown gaze spent most of the 'speech' looking into the tabletop while finally telling him that there was no chance in hell that she'd get over that tiiiny shard of feelings she had left for him if he was a part of her everyday life. Whenever she looked up, she couldn't tell for sure what was going on behind the green gaze, but she felt that at least it didn't seem to be indifference. Although she'd promised him that this wasn't going to be a telling-off, she scraped against a couple of edgy but very tiny things he'd done before that had hurt her. She silently acknowledged that at least she dared to navigate around these things today, which was braver than last week.


It came to light that they certainly didn't interpret things the same way. For this reason the talk felt all the better. She said finally that she had a dragon to kill, and that she needed him to run in the opposite direction for a while while she took it on. Aside from the metaphor being ludicrously gothic, she was disproportionately satisfied with having come up with it. She meant it.


She didn't mean for this to go on forever, so they agreed to meet on neutral ground in 1 1/2 months' time and check back. She told him that by then she hoped to be very happy to see him again, as a dear old friend. What she didn't say was that she had no idea if this would work, and that if she couldn't get over him, she wouldn't come. But she had hope, and to her relief this conversation was irrevocable and meant she had finally gotten out of the gridlock. If anything.

And when they said goodbye, she noticed for the first time that his eyes weren't really green. They were the same colour as the sea, and changed slightly with the sky.
And for that reason, she liked him even more, for reminding her of a hattifnatt.
Even if it was just in her head, it was a comfort to think that he was the one sailing the oceans in search of a destination that never materialized.