THIS HAPPENED TO ME
Was It All A Lie?
Unraveling the truth of love’s demise
I watched numbly as she packed her suitcase, throwing clothes in haphazardly as tears streamed down her face.
The ring I gave her just six months ago lay discarded on the nightstand, a hollow symbol of shattered promises.
Did she ever really love me? Or was this whole relationship built on lies?
The memories played on a loop in my mind…
Our first date at that cozy Italian place. She knocked over her glass of wine, turning bright red. But her laugh was so infectious, I couldn’t help joining in. Our eyes met, and I got lost in how they sparkled with warmth and mischief.
Was her radiant smile that night just an act? Were those soul-stirring gazes she gave me across the table merely well-rehearsed deceptions?
Then there was our first road trip together. We sang along terribly to 80s hits, stopping for ice cream at that roadside shack. Leaning over, she planted a dollop of strawberry on my nose, giggling like a schoolgirl. It felt so pure and childlike and free.
But maybe even that playful moment was staged. Just her going through the motions, pretending to feel what I desperately hoped she felt too.
I think of how she moved in with me, integrating our lives seamlessly. We adopted a rescue puppy she named Bear, doting on him like our child. Those nights cooking together cheesy rom-com playing in the background — they felt so blissfully domestic.
Were all those dreams of our future just a facade? Was her talk of having kids one day just empty words to keep me stringing along? Fabrications whispered between bodies entwined in the sheets?
Most of all, I remember her saying those three words first. I can picture the moment so vividly: Our feet dangling in the lake, her hand in mine, sunshine reflecting diamonds across the water. “I love you,” she spoke so simply yet profoundly.
When she repeated it again months later, looking deeply into my eyes as tears streamed down my cheeks from pure joy, was she lying then too? Did the “I do” she vowed at our wedding mean anything at all?
Or was this entire partnership simply a series of con jobs — an escalating flimflam of deception, intended to drain me of love until I awoke empty inside?
I can’t bear the thought of her never meaning a single word. It shatters my perception of everything we had.
Was the foundation of our entire relationship rotted with dishonesty? Or were her affections sincere at some point, only to decay over time?
I suppose it doesn’t matter.
Not really. Either way, I’m left hollow with the loss. Mourning what I thought we were. Grieving a future of family dreams is now forever stillborn.
But at least if she lied the whole way through, I can be angry. I can rail in self-righteousness at her betrayal. Perhaps staying bitter will dull the ache throbbing in my chest.
Because if she did love me as truthfully as I loved her, at least for a while…well, that reveals an even crueler reality. That love can die, killing off the person it animated too. Leaving their spirit for dead.
No, it’s easier if she never cared at all. It would be easier if our history was a complete fiction. Then I can’t be pitied for still naively clinging to spent remnants of affection. I can be coldly indifferent instead of tragically pathetic.
But every time she pauses while loading her car, fresh sobs spilling out as her eyes sweep our apartment, a glimmer of delusional hope flickers inside me. Part of me wants so desperately to believe it was all real once. However deep she buried it, I pray some kernel of love still remains, even if she chipped it away over time stone by stone.
Because the alternative is unbearable — that every touch, every kiss, every “I love you” was choreographed perfectly, an intricate and resilient fabrication. To accept that as truth means our relationship had all the warmth and meaning of a porno played on a loop.
So which is crueler — being conned by artifice or held hostage to the memory of authentic love’s demise? Was she an ingenious liar through and through? Or just a practitioner of the mundane and inevitable endings all intimacies face?
I may never know. But I suspect the real wound lies in which option I decide to believe.
If it was all fiction, I could be embittered but emboldened. A wiser man going forward, steering clear of femme fatales and burying my tender heart.
I took a gamble and lost, but survived to win another day.
However, if bits of our bond glowed with transcendence, only to smolder and die from neglect…that resignation leaves me gutted, for I’ll forever lament the demise of something divine, questioning where I failed love so catastrophically.
They say there are far worse things in this life than being lied to. But at this moment, I’m struggling to imagine what could wound more agonizingly than the death of hard-earned intimacy, than having our oaths decay to ashes on my disillusioned tongue.
My ex’s tear-streaked face contorts, catching me staring. Without a word, she rushes from the room to finish packing the car, physical escape from my pained gaze now urgent.
I suppose some perfect ambiguities must linger without resolution. Some exquisite corpses are best left unmurdered by autopsies of the heart.
So as she closes the door behind her, I remain seated in our bedroom — or is it just mine now? I don’t have the energy to pursue or protest or dissect any further.
For perseverating over whether our coupledom lived as fable or reality feels almost beside the point now. Either path leads to the same graveyard for hope. The destination widower’s cot is reserved for all who loved and lost.
Hand over my face, I finally break down and match her tears. Because no matter how real or counterfeit our story was written, its ending remains exquisitely, ruinously, human all the same.
