TownScar
Her hands were withered and wrinkled with age. But I didn't mind. If anything it was nice to have a new texture. I found it interesting. I loved that I had known her long enough to be able to see her skin become this way and to watch her hair turn to a dark slate hue. She was still the most gorgeous woman I'd ever known and I was right all those years ago when I'd said I could never leave her.
Despite what everyone told me, I was falling for this beautiful human being. Their thick and lustrous dark brown hair that was so perfectly smooth and looked straight out of a hair stylists' wet dreams. Their skin had stretch marks all across their chest and thighs and they reminded me of a map, and I thought of that map as a way to get closer to them. I adored their green sparkling eyes. They had the prettiest laugh and the cutest crooked front tooth. A smile that lit up a room and stirred my heart. They knew how to bring my ugly smile out and they knew everything about me. Their empathy knew no bounds and their passion was unsinkable. I never would have expected growing up to fall in love with them. I never thought I'd fall in love with anyone who preferred a pronoun other than "he" or "she". But Olive was by far one of the sweetest people I had ever met and I would forever be grateful for having the fortune to have ever met them. That was exactly why I was carrying a little velvet box in my coat pocket, a pretty little silver band resting inside of it.
Anguish deep in my gut. It hurts to close my eyes and attempt to let the darkness take over my brain. I can't be peaceful without her. Her warmth and arms around me kept me sane. It kept me going. To think that I'm expected to carry on like this for so long is just unrealistic. Every time I leave the house I feel as if I'm being stabbed not just by the cold but by the emptiness inside me. It doesn't feel right to smile when she's not there. I try to seek understanding and empathy from friends and family but they simply telling me that I'm being over dramatic or they say "I'm so sorry" like they would to a child who had dropped their lollipop. Because they don't know what it's like to have to sit at home when you know you're wife is off fighting for her life and the lives of everyone around you in a war torn zone. They don't know what that feels like to know that at any moment in time there could be a knock on the door letting you know the woman you've trusted with your soul for the past ten years is dead as a door nail. They don't know what it's like to live in constant fear and agony. They know what it's like to miss someone but they don't know what it's like to feel this level of loneliness and anguish.