• “I’m sorry. I can’t be with you anymore” his voice was strangled as he spoke, as if just saying those words was too much for him.

    You could tell he was in pain.

    You could tell he didn’t really want to do this to me.

    You could tell he felt he had to.

    So, I did what I had to. I lifted the handgun from its hiding place in the back of my jeans and smiled as I placed it to my head. Time slowed as my ex-lover realized what was about to happen. But before he could get the words out and move to stop me, I pulled the trigger.

    We’d been a couple for six years now, ever since our junior year in high school. And as I crumbled to the cold and unforgiving ground, I thought about all the plans we’d made, all those beautiful pictures that now, no one else would see. Just because there’s a bullet in my brain, that doesn’t mean my thoughts stop moving. I just find myself incapable of holding onto those thoughts for too long. This is what happens when you die, I guess.

    I could hear my ex-lover beside me, crying hard as he called for an ambulance. That voice of his, once I’d thought of it as music to my ears, was now nothing but a broken record, repeating the same line over and over, “My girlfriend shot herself! My girlfriend shot herself!”

    Silly boy

    I don’t belong to you anymore.

    We were once known as the perfect couple. It wasn’t just that we looked perfect together, we were perfect together. If we fought, we talked about it and fixed the problem before it got too bad. If we wanted to do something together, we planned it. We planned everything: when we’d hang out, when we’d go on dates, what we’d do, and how we’d do it. Our time together was scheduled and after six years of “I love you” and “you’re the only one for me”, my time was finally up…

    Something I’ve discovered as I lay in a pool of my own blood is that a lot of time passes when you’re waiting for help to arrive. My ex-lover was still crying, but now he was attempting to talk to me while he cried. But there was only one thing he could say:

    “Why?”

    He asked the question over and over, and I wished that I could slap him. You
    would think the answer was obvious. I did this out of love. And hate. You don’t spend six years with a person and dream up a future you don’t want. I wanted to be his wife. I wanted to have his children. I wanted us to be a family. And I wanted us to live happily ever after. Didn’t he want that too?

    My time was almost up.

    I could feel my life slipping away from me. It was getting harder to breathe. I forced open my eyes and looked at my panic-stricken ex-lover and smiled. Then I mouthed one last thing before everything…went…black.

    I love you.