For a Minute by Myron Matuzenko

“My lover was a person like no other – I wish to never see her again”

– November 11th, 23:59. That was an entry in the journal he was writing.

Marcus found himself lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Sometimes it felt like he was staring at a void - the room would disintegrate in his vision into a fog. “I guess that’s how a breakup feels like” – he thought to himself.

The sun was setting. The man held a journal in his hand - the notebook looked as if it had existed for a decade or more. Each page had been dented like leaves in autumn. Marcus wasn’t paying too much attention to its appearance, however. He just wrote in it. That was the only thing that could help.

He tried countless others. Just two hours ago, with his head resting on a bathroom door, he opened a bottle of rum. The second one. No, it must have been the third one. Marcus lost count. They weren’t helping anyway. They left the same void in him as the one he saw in the room. Likewise, they never helped with heartbreak. After yet another sip, he tried standing up. It was hard for him. His stomach ached like hell. His head was turning. He hit it on the edge of the sink. No, the bottles couldn’t cure it. The last one slipped from his shaking hands – suddenly a thousand shards of glass filled the bathroom.

“This is too much…” – Marcus whispered to himself, trying to put the words together. He decided to wash away the haze of intoxication. When the water hit his face unexpectedly, he let out a scream. Then, an idea crossed his head: “I should just scream all these feelings out!”.

Marcus crawled out of the bathroom towards his bed. The journal was still lying there. Marcus threw it on the floor and started shouting. Standing on top of the bed, like a lion on top of a rock, he growled. He screamed: “God damn you! And all your stupid friends! You never loved me anyway!”. Marcus howled like a wounded animal, spilling out curses on his ex-lover. He waved his hands like a madman. Took his pillows and threw them away. Even torn one of them. The neighbours must have heard everything. They must have thought he was out of his mind. “God damn you and everything you do!” – he proclaimed.

Time passed. He couldn’t bring himself to stop – he couldn’t calm down. “Now she’ll hear it!” – he thought viciously – “Now she will hear me, and she’ll know how much it hurts! She will know how I truly feel!”. She never heard him, of course.

Marcus couldn’t scream forever. When he started to utter yet another “God damn you!” his voice suddenly cracked. He couldn’t scream anymore – now he could only croak, like a crow. Out of breath and with no voice, he fell. “This is madness – he thought to himself – What am I doing?”

He was lying down. “I can’t go on like this. No, I can’t…” – he whispered to himself – “But what can I do? It hurts so much! My heart is bleeding! She left me for someone else. What am I to do after that?”

Marcus let out a long sigh. Now that the frenzy was over, the void came back. It would always come back after episodes like this. Emptiness followed fury faithfully.

Slowly but surely his room started to disintegrate, mash into one amalgam. First was the door. Then the cupboard and the rug. Marcus couldn’t differentiate them from the void. Then the window near the bed was gone. The void was getting close. The pillows joined it swiftly. It started to crawl on top of the bed to get to his body. It consumed the bed legs first. Crawling upwards it took the blanket. Marcus should have been next.

His wasn’t seeing properly. No objects were around anymore, only the void. “Maybe I should just let it devour me” – he thought – “It hurts too much. If I let it take over me, there will be no room for my emotions. I don’t know where to keep them anyway”.

The room was gone – the void left nothing. “I can succumb to it now” – Marcus decided. For a minute he thought he would. He noticed something, however.

One thing in the room stayed the same. It wasn’t a part of the void – it stood out of it. Marcus saw it: his journal. 

His hand, still trembling, reached out for the notebook. That is where he kept all the emotions. That was a place, where he could speak truthfully. There was no guilt nor shame there. Most importantly, there was no void. Marcus opened the journal. There was no void inside of it still. Instead, it was filled with memories. It bore all the days Marcus has lived. Some of them were filled with joy, whilst others were full of pain. The object bore no trace of the void, however.

It started to make sense now. “This is where I keep my emotions. This is where my heartbreak should be”.

Marcus started writing obsessively. It was like a trance – he completely forgot of the world around him. So much, so that he didn’t even notice how the void faded away suddenly. He was in the journal. He wrote down everything: how much it hurt, how he wishes that she’d be damned, how she never truly loved him or anyone, for that matter, how she left him for somebody else, how he felt the emptiness consume him.

Time passed yet again. Marcus looked out the window. It was pitch dark now.

“It’s helping!” – he thought – “Maybe I can relieve myself at least a little bit! I can be a madman in my journal. I can testify my hurt. I can exorcise my heartbreak.”

He took the notebook back in his hands. “I will be a madman for a minute. I will know sorrow. I will know heartbreak and I will be hurt.” – he thought – “I will leave it all there. After that, I forget about the heartbreak. After that, I move on.”

At 23:59 Marcus wrote:

“My lover was a person like no other – I wish to never see her again”. 

“One more minute of hurt” – the man told himself – “one more minute and I let go”.