Cutting Loose and Falling (Write about something that was difficult)

I’ve had many trials, from taking my first flight alone to getting on a roller coaster for the first time.  The most difficult, by far, was breaking up with a long term girlfriend.  At the time, I felt it wasn’t right for me and little notions of this kept getting into cracks of my psyche.  When I sat down to dinner one night, the dam broke and realization flooded over me in a cold wave.  So I stepped away from my relatives into another room and made the call.

Tears rolled down my face.  Sobs erupted from my throat.  My heart seemed to tear itself to pieces.  I didn’t want to admit it was over, but confronting this was the right thing to do, I knew.  Even then, I still tried to rationalize it and try to make it work, but we both knew that it was done.  I felt ragged and worn, like a washcloth that had been wrung out and had crusted over, the tears refusing to stop for the entire night.

The days that followed were in a horrible limbo.  I rarely smiled, I retreated into the guest room for solitude, and even when surrounded by my family, I had never felt more alone in my life.  Everyone reached out to me, even her, but nothing could pierce the strange otherness that had taken over me.  I checked myself into a depression group when I found that I had lost my desire to live, but that only made things worse.  Hearing about everyone else talking about being molested or losing their sons before their time made me feel like a burden with my small problems and I wanted to stop living more than ever.

Worry not, for this story has a happy ending.  For one, I was able to provide some levity to the depression group, hopefully helping them through their problems a bit.  A year and more later, though, both the girl and I realized our mistakes.  We’d grown and changed and realized certain things about ourselves that we strove to fix.  Now we’re together once again and function much better as a couple.  I honestly can’t see myself being with anyone else right now.

Forward, backward, sideways – none would work.

“For Christ sake!” Lindsey yelled as she threw her Nintendo DS across the room.  Thankfully, it landed in a pile of pillows, so nothing got broken.

There was a rush of footsteps and Ruth entered, looking worried.  “Something wrong?”

“It’s this damn puzzle game!” Lindsey replied.  “I’ve been beating my head against this one challenge all day, but I can’t get past maneuvering this one piece.  Forwards, backwards, sideways, up and down, all of them get me jack shit.”

Ruth looked from her roommate to the DS all the way across the room.  “I can see that,” she said.  “For a moment, I thought you really had banged your head on something.”

“I may as well have,” she said.  “The pain’s about the same.”

nylon, moonlight, curtain

Slowly, she slid her nylon off of her leg and draped it over the side of the bed, the moonlight coming through the curtain shining off her smooth leg.  She leaned back as her lover removed his shirt and tossed it to a corner that he wouldn’t have to worry about until later.  His hands slid up her body as he leaned in and kissed her neck.  A gasp caught in her throat as she reveled in the ecstasy of the moment.  The day was done.  The night had just begun.

Goosebumps rose where his hot breath touched her.  In return, her tongue teased the lobe of his ear, triggering a hiss of pleasure.  She moved down to his neck, kissing it deeply before drawing blood from it.

The tiny cog seemed to be rather insignificant…

The tiny cog seemed to be insignificant, but that was kind of the point.  So it was that no one noticed it unfold into a spider-like robot and start climbing up the inside of the mechanism.  With the tiny clink-clank of its spindly legs, it made it to the top and started unscrewing various pieces.  Despite it being small and unable to lift much, it made quick work of the upper mechanisms.  In about seven minutes, its work was done.

With its task complete, the larger conveyer belt began to lean, the supports now bending with every object that passed over the sabotage.  Eventually, the belt gave way and a large hunk of metal plummeted below and slammed into the reactor.  Sirens wailed indicating a valve shutoff.  A meltdown was imminent.  The droid’s deed was done.