Quote: "For what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught in glimpses in every object by day – I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women – my own features – mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"

 (Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte.)

I hate the trees. There is not one I pass by that does not send my mind reeling into a dark void of despair. It reminds me too much. Reminds me of what I had, what I lost. What I abandoned. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so they say. Hell is here. Hell is now.

 No longer the soothing green of home, with the soft surresses of the leaves outside my window, and the moist smell of rain on bark. Where are they now? Where have the familiar walls of my home gone? I miss their closeness, their atmospheric wisdom that seeps into the air they fill. I saw her under the trees last.

 But the trees here are red like open wounds. The leaves flare like a flag, blazing angrily at me, bleeding and sore. They are dying, I know, bowing to the cold darkness they face of a life without the light, without the sun. There will be nothing left for them. For what is a life without the light? Faced with a choice between a bleak and empty existence or a numb, gentle night with no regrets, it is easy to see what the answer is.

 I stand beneath the weeping trees, gazing up the the raw orange and angry red that tumble to the ground. All things must end. Nothing lasts forever. There is no forever. There might have been once, maybe. But not now. At least, not for us. Only for me. Forever is a long time.

 Our beginning was our ending. The birth was a death. But, no – she has not died! I see her every day. In the trees, in the contours of the trunks I see her face, the curves of her cheekbones and the fullness of her lips. In the twisting branches I hear the sound of her laughter and her calming voice. There is nowhere I can turn where I do not find some small part of her, forcing me to remember things I do not want to. I did not leave her. No, instead I tore some essential part of her out of herself and dragged it with me, leaving her with that same essential part of me. I broke what was not meant to be broken.

 It was like pulling up the tree I stand beneath. Taking hold of one end and yanking and tugging and ripping, hearing the rumbling protesting of the roots as it is pulled from the land it has dwelled in, until all that is left is a massive, frayed hole in the earth's surface and a dead thing in my hands.

 But if ever there was a moment when I wanted her more, I cannot recall it. I yearn with every atom of my being to turn back and run to her. I could be with her in less than a day, back in her arms. I want to forget all I have done, for the aching inside to go away. I have never felt such an intense pain in all of my life. I would rather suffer being transformed into a vampire a thousand times over than go through this. At least being changed would mean an end. I see no end to the agony I am lost in now.

 I grip onto the tree, close my eyes. Who knew love could hurt like this? Love was supposed to be beautiful, to grow and flourish and elate the beholder. But not this love – this love is ugly, a powerful weed that chokes all it can curl its wretched tendrils about.

 There will be no happy endings for me. There will be no safety and laughter and rejoice when the I turn the last pages.

 Like the trees around me must do, the happiness has died.

 But the love lives on.