Gearbox

In my mind, I am driving away from this.  Away from everything you mean, and all you've ever meant to me.  Encased in steel, downshifting up the hill off which I fell for you, emotions screaming like a turbo diesel locked in overdrive.  I need to get away from you – to feel the open road beneath my wheels, wind tearing through my hair and drying up all of my tears.  Time, speed, and distance will converge upon the point where I begin to heal from all the wounds you've dealt to me, like so many marked cards in a losing hand.  The crossroads of personal wellness await, where all the shards of my broken personality shall meet like so many pieces of twisted metal in a fiery collision of self-awareness … or perhaps just self-destruction.  Cards flying everywhere:  game over.

Halfway up the hill I stall, roll back, and slide to the soft, gravel shoulder of confusion.  What am I running from?  And where else can I go?  The road is not a destination, unless it is to end myself in old, foregone conclusions of a single-car accident, ruled suicide.  I have shunned that road before; put on the brakes and gone back instead … can I do so now?

You told me to go, to find someone else to love.  I wanted to laugh, and cry, and scream at the utter stupidity of such suggestions.  The heart is not a signal-light, to be turned on and off at will.  The heart is the gearbox of the mind, and once it has been marked and scarred it will always stick at certain places, grind and stall at others.  You are a chunk of metal in my heart that throws me out of gear sometimes, but to tear you out and fling you aside would only mangle the whole mechanism further, crippling my emotional drives until I could no longer move in any direction but reverse.

I cannot leave this place without you with me, but I know I cannot stay.  And you have put yourself in neutral, refusing to go anywhere that gravity does not lead you.  But gravity can only lead you down, and there is only so far down that you can go before you reach a place I cannot follow.  "Inevitable", you say, shrugging and claiming that you tried, that you did everything you could to stay.  But pushing on the gas pedal does nothing if it's not connected to the engine; trying is meaningless when there's nothing you're specifically trying to do.

I step out of the car, and go back to you, damaged gears grinding in my soul.  I walk back down the hill to where you wait, and I know you're not waiting for me – you're only waiting for the end.  I cannot give you that, of everything that I would like to give you … because whatever I may become, however twisted I may grow by staying in this place with you, I will never be your excuse for giving up.

Lights out.  Parking brake on.  Engine running, waiting for you to look up at me.  Gears grinding, weeping oil and blood.  I love you.