it was a Saturday evening when my hands laid on his,
longing to intertwine his fingers one last time.
not long after, 
his hands walked out of the room 
with a train ticket and a piece of my heart 
entrapped in its huge 
but soft fingers.

he said to me before leaving,
"my hands will always be there for you... 
to caress you,
to hold you, 
to love you."

two months passed, my hands met his, 
again. 
my hand enveloped his finger as he twisted it around, 
dancing with joy.

my hands were weak
from holding the knife to carve a Kokeshi doll 
for him,
wishing for the future to be as beautiful
as it felt at the moment. 

his hand let the doll and his mouth kiss 
while my hands rested the knife 
on the bedside table
with mere satisfaction.

his hands,
softer than ever
entered my fantasy
making its way between my thighs;
making me feel more alive than I ever could.

as his hands rested on the bed that night,
my hand glided across, 
reaching his phone.
my hands, 
trembled with pain
with sorrow
with a destructive vision
with an i-knew-men-could-not-be-trusted.

without a second thought, 
my hand threw the doll onto the wall. 
his hands,
shook and confused
held mine.

but my hands did not want to be held anymore.
it wanted to be saved
from all the things it was going to do.

my hands,
held his neck
strangling him
abusing him
leaving a mark on his right cheek which it so passionately held.

my hands, 
held the knife peacefully sitting next to the doll
and stabbed him right where it hurt,
the heart.

i said to him before leaving,
"my hands wanted to be there for you...
to caress you, 
to hold you, 
to love you

but instead

your hands destroyed it."

Stage 1 – Drawing out reasons

It’s the inevitable question of “Will this end with an ugly heartbreak?” Most of the time, the answer is “yes” or “I don’t know” but it’s almost never a definite “no”. So naturally, my brain comes up with innumerable reasons to break it off and mind you – it can be as petty as the way he laughs, the way he doesn’t look straight into my eyes when he talks or because he prefers to always sit on the opposite side of the table across me.

But obviously, none of those reasons are good enough.

Stage 2 – Preparing my mind to begin ‘the end‘

Everyday, every moment, my mind constantly reminds me that this is never going to work out. So what do I do? I train my mind and body to not break apart when it actually happens. I don’t call or text him the first thing in the morning, I don’t spend minutes looking at his pictures anymore and I don’t talk about him with my friends. The end is finally here in my head and it is ready for it.

Stage 3 – Finding something/someone as a replacement

Being selfish is a funny thing; it is most often termed as ‘prioritizing myself’. I see a potential replacement who may replace his lack of presence. I look for things in the replacement which I never found in him, but again, not good enough.

Stage 4 – Dumping all the stages on him at once

The journey of my mind and me only lasted until here. I finally tell him all the reasons (that are good enough), I mention the replacement to him and I bid the long awaited goodbye. What I don’t think about is – his mind was never prepared but I had to be selfish prioritize myself, right?

Stage 5 – Was it worth it?

Right now, it may seem that it’s not but it had to happen one day.

“Did this end with an ugly heartbreak?”
“No.”

I could still see him everywhere. In my sleep, while eating, watching TV – everywhere. It has been over 24 hours since I buried him in my backyard, but his screams and thoughts haunt me every second of my life. Although I tried my best to get rid of all the gifts he gave me, my house was still filled with yellow color walls, centerpieces, furniture, and whatnot. “Yellow is the happiest color”, he’d say. However, I thought it was best to leave things as it is until his case is closed by the investigators who thought he either left me or was abducted. 

I barely socialized with my neighbors or had any friends, but he was the complete opposite. He had enough friends and enemies because of his widely controversial family-owned conglomerate. I was always a black color lover (he hated black, or as he’d say it, “life is too yellow to be black”). My house was my safe space but he changed everything and I could barely recognize my home or myself anymore. “I am tired of black. Yellow is the happiest color, you know? Just one more patch of wall left to turn yellow”, he said to me while I stared blankly at my dark yet magnificently colored wall. Before I could even defend it, he had already begun painting. “I’ve had enough”, I said that night while he sat there watching television. He was tired of black and I was tired of him. We got into a heated argument and I ended his life by hammering his skull with the yellow paint brush. I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss him, of course I do, but there’s only a certain limit until one can tolerate someone else’s a million “Yellow is the happiest color” statements. Everything else around you becomes so colorful at a point in time, that you become devoid of colors. 

Just when I thought everything was going well with the case and the cops had no choice but to close it, a neighbor told the cop that her dog found a yellow shoe stained with blood, dumped in a garbage can at the end of the street. There goes my 28th complaint to the municipality to clean the street’s garbage regularly. At this point, the cops were sure that there was a possible murder and it was in this area. Many of his friends and his own family lived in the same area which was the only silver lining. Nevertheless, I was an obvious suspect.

I had to act hastily before anyone could get the slightest clue about what had happened. Not so long after the shoe incident, the cops dug deeper into the dump yard and found an empty black cardholder…also covered in blood. Thankfully, it was empty because I had left my cards outside to dry after it was drenched in blood but I was stupid enough to dispose of the cardholder. The investigators went on a heavy search to find out who the cardholder belonged to. I searched through my things to find something that could help me get out of this mess, and there it was! A suede yellow leather cardholder that he gifted me on my last birthday. Of course, he didn’t care about what I liked. When the cops showed up at my doorstep, their search began in the whole house and they assumed that I liked yellow as much as he did since everything I owned was in yellow. Soon enough, I saw them arresting Jack Ville, the only guy who loved black as much as me and was my late boyfriend’s long-time nemesis. As I turned around and saw my living room covered in yellow, I wasn’t annoyed anymore. 

Yellow is the happiest color, indeed.

Did you know that statistics suggest that high school students now have the same anxiety levels as mental asylum patients in the 1950’s? What a shocker. There are a lot of things that contribute to these anxiety levels but most of all, it’s the influence of social media and pop culture. The constant need to prove to your friends that you’re living a happy life through Instagram stories, the job/education announcements on LinkedIn, and don’t even get me started on the FOMO that comes from all of this. 

However, according to me, the key to being overthinking is underthinking. Underthink your results which you already gave the exam for, underthink their feelings about you, underthink your future, and just maybe for once, live in the moment rather than overwhelming yourself with it. Even the movies and TV shows know that. Whether it’s Michael Kelso from That 70’s Show, Mr. PeanutButter from BoJack Horseman, Joey from F.R.I.E.N.D.S or literally any other character that lived in oblivion but lived life to its fullest – these are some of the pros of pop culture that we can definitely learn something from. 

A couple of months ago, I told my father that I was feeling sad for no reason at all. He replied, “You are privileged to feel sad for no reason.” For most of you, it might sound a bit condescending or stuck-up, but when you think about it, it starts making so much sense. Why can’t we be happy for no reason? Why did we miss out on that part of our life?

During this month, I was prepared to be in a different place completely – mentally and physically but I am still here. Although I am not really disappointed by it. Until then, I can keep writing and underthinking things about how beautiful yet stupid life itself is.

I don’t believe in relationships, but I do believe in love. Love exists in everything. Love is beautiful and it is sad how the meaning of it deteriorates because of everything that happens around us. There are different types of love that we see and feel. I, for one, have never experienced what it’s like to feel loved by another person or to love. When I think of love, I think of ways that I could pamper myself, feed myself, go on trips, and have the freedom to do whatever I want. What scares me about love from another person is that I will lose myself.

I am pretty influenced by old romantic movies and novels that talk about romance so deeply and gracefully. I wish to have that kind of love. Although, unlike those movies, I don’t think a relationship is everything. Love is. I cannot imagine putting anyone else first in my decisions over myself or changing my plans for another person’s convenience. But I am ready to give the necessary key elements – loyalty, trust, acceptance, and so on. That’s how it is supposed to be. It is beyond my understanding why people die because of a broken heart. You own yourself and someone else can never define that for you.

Even serial killers love; it could be for their mothers, their partners, or…themselves. But they do love. The bottom line is, love is everywhere. It’s on you to decide to what extent you are going to let it affect you. I have spent years trying to love myself and I cannot let another being destroy it all overnight. There was a dialogue in The Vampire Diaries which I still can’t get out of my head – “His love consumes me”. I realized how pop culture has normalized a person getting consumed because of love. I don’t want a love that consumes me; I want a love that makes me feel more alive, more powerful, more grateful. I haven’t found anyone who can make me feel any of those things. I don’t know if I will ever be able to, but until then I would like to hope that there is someone in the world who also loves Love in the most obnoxious way.