Change

{ I could see it coming. I didn't want to believe it, but my subconscious could no longer maintain the illusion. After ten years, you really know someone. The way she smiled. The way she kissed me. None of it was the same anymore. She wasn't cheating on me; she's not that kind of person. Day to day though I could feel her slipping away. She no longer felt for me the way I still felt for her. It's not her fault though, nor is it mine. Emotion is purely reactive and is not something we can control despite our inherent free will.

A few months after we started dating, while neither of us believed in the idea of marriage, we came to a consensus that we would stick together no matter what. We often discussed the idea that somewhere in the world there would always exist someone else who we found more attractive than one another. Removing ourselves from that never ending and fruitless search, we maintained a fiction that we were each others soul-mates. We would support each other, love each other, grow old together, and change together. We even talked about adopting a child once.

And then it all came to a halt. I knew it the morning she left for work. Not wanting to accidentally wake me up, she would normally leave the bedroom door slightly ajar; that day I woke up and the door was tightly shut. We discussed the situation logically over dinner that evening, and she moved out the following day. And I was alone, repeating to myself one of the last things she said to me, "I still love you, but I've changed". I had no choice but to change as well. } - A short fiction