“But you didn’t have to cut me off…” 

It plays in the background on repeat and I don’t know what I should do. Should I just take it off? Should I add some Sting and Phil Collins to it, to make the sounds reverberating less depressing? The more I think of the words Gotye sings, the more I think of the things we’ve said to each other. And like that, I free fall into a spiral tunnel, lined with my blood-red rage.

“I want space,” he said to me. Space. What the fuck does that mean? He has space. It’s called ‘air.’ Sheesh…

I remember when I asked for space. He told me “I love you too much to give you up completely,” and so he stayed. Not as a boyfriend, but a lover whenever I needed one. And it was okay for a while. But then that nagging suspicion that he would be all ‘I can’t do this,’ would creep back into my system, washing over me like the tides on the shore.

“Hello?” he answers.

“Yeah, how are you?” I ask. It had been months since I decided to completely call it quits, but I thought we were going to be friends. After all, I did share a birthday with him post break-up and thought we were cool.

“I’m alright. Is there anything you want?” he asks. Like…I’m bothering him. Like I’m cutting into his oh-so-important time.

“I just wanted to say hi,” I say. I can’t believe him. After everything we went through, this is how he acts?

“Why are you so distant?” I ask him. I hear him sigh over the receiver and I know something I don’t want to hear is coming.

“It hasn’t been that long since we broke up. If you want us to be friends, then I need space,” he tells me. Are you fucking serious? When I wanted space, he needed me. Now he wants space?

“Wow…okay…” I say to him, “Have a nice life then.” And there he goes. Slipping through my fingers like sand. I look at the phone. How could this be the same person…

“I don’t even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough…”

“But you guys were soo good together?!” a friend says as I relay the story of us breaking up. Being that I’m reserved, I haven’t shouted it from the rooftops that we’re over. Though, I should’ve.

“Yeah we were, but things just…fell apart.” I hate saying that. Things don’t fall apart. People drift apart. I saw the signs. We had the arguments, the shouting matches, the moments of deafening silence. And somehow we fooled ourselves into thinking that staying with each meant that we loved each other.

“Why can’t you guys just resolve whatever it is, and get back together?” another friend asks.

“Do you think you guys can ever get back together?” asks another.

“Do you want to be with ### again?” texts another. I look at the question. I didn’t even know how to answer it. Or if I want to. Especially after that hollow interlude we had. It stares at me in my phone. Finally, I delete it.

“I don’t want to live that way, reading into every word you say…” 

“What do you mean my parents have a hold on me?” I ask him.

“You know exactly what I mean! You’re an adult and yet you play into their hands, all the time!”

“Well, excuse me for not saying FUCK YOU to the people who keep a roof over my head just because you want to wake up 6 o’clock in the morning and stick your prick somewhere!”

“Don’t you dare make this about sex…”

“It’s ALWAYS about sex…and always about you! Don’t you think I go through enough with them, I have to get this shit from you too?”

“Just because I want to be intimate with you, and be with you and spend more time, doesn’t make me sex crazy.”

“No, it doesn’t. But guess what? It’s not like if I tell my parents ‘Fuck you, I’m spending the week at ###’s house this week,’ you can provide for the two of us when they kick my ass out!”

“I’ll manage somehow.”

“You can’t even manage for yourself!”

How alien we were then from what we were before. We were all hugs and kisses and Cherry Blossoms and Orchids and sweet potato pies and bubble gum candy. Then…everything went sour like lemons with too much acid that you have to purse your lips and squeeze your eyes beyond tight to ride out the sensation.

“no you didn’t have to stoop so low…” 

“I can’t believe he took it back,” she says to me. My confidant, my best friend.

“Yah, he did.” You would think, when someone buys you a gift, that it was yours. Not yours until he decides he doesn’t want to date you anymore so he gives it to his best friend’s sister.

“That was a douche bag move,” she says to me. She’s relaying the info over to her boyfriend through the phone. He mumbles something to her and then says something inaudible. “That’s a douchey thing to do. Maybe you’re better off anyway,” she says to me.

I look back and it and think, maybe I am better off. As it stands, I haven’t really thought about him. Not until I heard that damn Gotye song. And the more I listen to it, the more I think of him. That’s it. I’m taking this damn song off.

“Somebody…that I used to know.”