Dear Sarah: Not a Tiny Story

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madness of love. dating. end of romance.

Part three of this nonsense. As you might have guessed. Yes. There is a woman named Sarah. Yes. Sarah and I have met. And yes. We are not together.

So what’s the true story, you ask?

Dear Sarah. My Sarah. Sarah. She was my obsession. Not possession but obsession.

She answered my berserk pleading letter and came to visit me at the co-op housing after I spent a lengthy stint at the mental health centre. The weekly visits to the ranch for therapy and institution break are how I met Sarah. She is one of the ranch caretakers and owners. She caught my eye immediately on the first visit. By the second week, I was obsessed writing sonnets of passion, lure, and desire. Unable to sleep. Of course, I didn’t share any of my madness with her and the heated proses of my creation. How could I possibly tell her that she held a spell over my mind? Dance was the only rational option and she easily obliged. A smile from her and I drowned in her soul. After that, the dance became our ritual and eventually I utter more than the two words of asking her for a dance. I finally elaborated the reasons for my stay at the centre and my family history of alcoholism and neglect. She seemed tenderly concerned and generously interested. I don’t know why she said yes and I prayed it wasn’t because of pity or righteousness. Her words appeared genuine when she cautiously admitted her interest in me. The romance blossomed for a while but it never reached the level I fantasized about. The level I needed it to be because to Sarah it was always a test-run. I was a test-run, not a commitment or future, no matter how I tried to fuse my soul with hers. And that’s where the problem lies. The intimidation, the lack of space, the constant need for nurture. I asked for more than anyone can deliver, where one person gets completely erased and the other completely consumed. I am the former. Sarah was the latter.

A recipe for disaster, indeed.

No metaphors. No lyrical beauty. The day my heart came to a hard full-stop. ‘The talk,’ she said and the next words were difficult to hear but it ended quite abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ and she let go of my hand and walked away.

All the paintings were plastered over the walls. All the photographs of our happiness that I kept to feed my daily obsession. Everything greyed out and faded. The texts that kept on building and suffocating her. My anger and my kindness were like a swing rising and falling from one end to the other within minutes. The pleading, the guilt trips, and accusations. I didn’t know how to keep her. I didn’t know what to do so Sarah would stay and return. From whimpers to shouts, I couldn’t control my voice and my empty heart. Because when the heart is empty no one can fill it than the self that hurting and burrowing in pain.

I knew that but I didn’t listen to reason, to the doctor’s, to Sarah.

And then Sarah met Kyle and the emptiness in my heart spilled to every part of me. I couldn’t go to the ranch anymore. I couldn’t reach her. She couldn’t be mine anymore. It felt like a madman was chasing me with a chainsaw. But that was all my creation. I became the madman chasing me with a chainsaw. Because there is no control. There is no reality besides the nightmare that I constructed.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how we met. It doesn’t matter that she ripped my heart out. Because what matters is where I am now. Why stay rational? Why tell the fable without twisted words and musical rhymes? The tragedy is better written in madness and chaos where nothing makes sense besides the last sentence.

It’s over. Good-bye.

Let that sink in and let me paint my world upside-down, if only for a while.

© Jacob Greb — 2022

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