The Square Root of the Soul of Hellfire

Seven Van Nort

Chest tightening. Your pulse hammers against your rib cage. It’s sharp. Palms are sweating, you are shaking internally… it feels like your body is going hollow, unsteady, fast approaching inability to hold yourself on your two legs. There’s a constant need to look over your shoulder, be hyperaware of your surroundings, of how your friends are acting towards you, of the words pervading air.

This is fear.

This becomes your life when your ex-boyfriend very publicly, and obviously, can’t let you go. This is what it feels like to have a stalker.

When you pass him, you’ll see the hope in his eyes… hope that today’s the day you come crawling back. You never give in to it. You go the other direction. This becomes your life, always going in the other direction.

~~

I didn’t intend on waking up with bad feeling looming inside my chest. I didn’t plan on caring so much, or so often, but it always happens like that, doesn’t it? It’s part of the human condition to be attracted to flames like our own, without considering the third degree burns bonfires can cause when you get too close…

And I didn’t plan on getting too close, not after his lips met another’s while they were promised to me. The opposite: I intended to ruin him for his indifference (the irony in relation to Frankenstein’s creature is not lost on me). I wanted to cause him more pain and suffering than was the tip of the iceberg for me. I did this by making him fall in love with me. I made him care as much as I refused to believe I did.

We weren’t ‘official’ this time around. I was discovering myself through polyamory, and had a girlfriend, as well as him… something I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t jealous about, but he consistently swore it was okay. His emotional outbursts were caused by his borderline personality disorder, but I had an inkling that my involvement with someone else might have been the triggering factor. I suppose him fucking around with the same ex who broke us up initially was him voicing his opinion on the matter. But this time, he wasn’t so secret about it. This time, he flaunted her directly in front of me. It was a mixture of bad feeling and jealousy and her that caused the final break.

We spent so much time around each other, and our negative feelings, tucked beneath the surface, brewed and seeped into each other. It was quickly transforming into a toxic environment, and we were indefinitely falling. It was impacting both my mental health, and his mental health, in the worst kind of way. I wanted to leave for weeks before I did, but I knew it was going to be like the first breakup. I knew if I did, he would try to warp my perception of myself again. He’d get angry at me for leaving, try to make my life hell because of it. I knew what was going to happen, but my therapist kept pushing me to do it.

I feel like he knew it was coming, too. I feel like he was okay with it, until he wasn’t. Until he had time to marinate in rejection and self-pity. He went after my friends first; it took less than 24 hours. He left a note on my sorority sister’s girlfriend’s door:

“Chris and 7 are fucking again”;

He said he witnessed us making out in front of our dorm building. All we did was take a trip to Wal-Mart. We didn’t sit on the same bench on the shuttle. We were never even fucking to begin with.

He went after me next, after the police spoke to him about leaving my life alone. I was legitimately fearful of seeing him around campus, which he always made sure I did. I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel him breathing down my neck. I could hear him dragging my name through the mud.

It was an epic ping pong battle with himself; bouncing back and forth between trying to isolate me from my friends (saying that I was transphobic and unwilling to use preferred pronouns, saying that the reason police were involved was because I was accusing him of raping me, saying that I was actually the abusive one) and then trying to instill fear by making sure I knew he wasn’t going away (intentionally invading my spaces by coming to organization meetings he wasn’t a part of, knowing all of my favorite spots around campus and making sure he was always there, knowing my schedule and routine and following me with his eyes on occasion, but more often than not, with his actual being).

~~

It was my personal perception of the human experience that I chose to deny the love stories written or previewed on a screen. In the world we live in, there are no star-written romances that incite sparks and persuade you to swallow flames. People who accept your flaws for all they are (the ugly and the smell of decay that clings to the clothing in the back of your closet), those people who you connect with enough to not question the way you are… they don’t exist. I believed (emphasis on the past tense of that word). I’ve never been the romantic type.

But it was a forbidden attraction; not in the sense that we weren’t allowed to be in love, but in the sense that we really fucking shouldn’t have been. He is my kryptonite. No matter how many bad things he did to me, there will always be some part of me that endlessly desires to be with him. And I want to say that everyone has a person like this, but I hope to god that isn’t true.

He was every good thing and vibe and more wrapped up in an awful package… or perhaps it was the packaging that was beautiful, and the rest was awful beyond measure. He was a surface lover I let in further than anyone else.

He was the kind of person you want to hand the bone saw to; I didn’t just let him in, I let him open me up for himself, take a look around, get comfortable, intertwine with my energy. I felt an innate attraction the moment we met. It was movie quality, HD: eyes meeting, and an instant connection.

There is a myth about red strings, how we each have one tied to our pinkies, inevitably connected to someone, somewhere. We were attached by the soul, tangibly felt between the two of us. It was messy and explosive; when it was good, it felt like the universe was rooting us on; when it was bad, it felt like collapse.

Everything I felt for him, I let consume me. We were magnetically and gravitationally pulled towards each other. It was an almost ethereal experience. Whenever he touched me (even a simple brushing of fingertips) I could feel my soul vibrating beneath my skin, reaching out to touch him right back.

~~

Easily confused on the matter, I’ve always associated my first love with the girl I dated and lived with for two years, the person I almost married. But he was my first soul connection. Something deeper than love. You don’t just feel it in your heart, it’s like your entire body recognizes the person. It isn’t just you and your feelings… there are no unrequited soul connections. It’s an ancient level of being. Like strangers with undiscovered histories.

And it isn’t romantic by nature, not in the love sense — because even I can admit that the idea of souls knowing each other before you and your physical being really do is a romantic notion, but it isn’t about love. Those feelings are formed on their own, and a soul connection can strengthen it, but it isn’t the reason behind it. So, perhaps the biggest difference between love and a soul connection is simply that there’s no correlation or causation between the two.

And it was the soul connection that fed into the fact that he was the person that no matter how much he hurt me, no matter how badly I wanted him gone, I really wanted him to stay. My entire body screamed for him to keep doing me dirty, as long as I was his main focus, at the forefront of his thoughts.

Leaving him was like coming off a lifelong addiction. It hurt, it felt like part of me had been hastily removed. Even when he was stalking me, at least he was still there. Even when I transferred, I saw him everywhere I went. It was how I imagine a heroin addict feels when they let go before they’re really ready. You see it because you want to, because your body wants to. He left his imprint on me, laid claim to my soul. So even when I left, he was still there.

And I could tell you a thing or two about swallowing fire and, in turn, having the fire swallow you. People are never what they seem, what we want them to be. But we were so much more than personality attributes. We were Hellfire, and dark magic. We were the kind of people from movies. I knew he would be someone who changed my life, and he did.

Within a week of asking me to be his girlfriend, he had cheated on me with an ex I was supposed to be okay with. He told me I was special because he was honest with me about it, and he’s never been honest about cheating before. He told me all they did was kiss. He said if I wanted to break up with him, he understood. There wasn’t even reassurance that it wouldn’t happen again.

I did [break up with him].

First, I made him feel the extent of his guilt.

He cheated on me, and it quickly became my fault because I wouldn’t let him get away with it. It was my fault because I dared to stand up for myself. It was my fault because I loved myself, and valued myself, more than him. I may have been hopelessly intoxicated by his existence, but I never lost sense of who I was, and how much more important I was [I am] to myself than anyone else.

It should have stayed there, over and done. Even though he was transferring to my college, in the same major and dorm building, I should have let it die.

~ ~

Cut to a scene of two attractive people in a backyard. It’s 1a.m. and they are tipsy from tequila shots. They both know their connection only vibrates louder after they’ve been drinking, but they do it anyways. He hurt her, and her goal is to make him hopelessly attracted.

She does this by initiating physical touch through a wrestling match of sorts. They push and shove, trying to get the other against the flexible metal fence. More often than not, they are pelvis against pelvis. At first, they bounce back and immediately begin a new round.

She gets malicious and strategic — so does he. He lets her shove his back in to the metal. When he bounces, this time, she’s holding on to the bar at the top. She lets his body collide into hers, and lingers close to his face for only seconds, but it feels like minutes. They take turns letting each other win; they revel in the seconds of closeness. The air begins to crackle around them. He almost slips up and tries to kiss her several times; he stops himself.

Cut to the two of them sitting in the grass, pulling up handfuls and throwing them in each other’s laps. Their knees are touching, and when their eyes meet, his breath noticeably catches. He bites his bottom lip and looks away.

“What?” She asks the question she already knows the answer to.

“Nothing.” He says, but when his eyes meet hers, his teeth are latched onto his bottom lip again.

“You can tell me.” She tries to draw it out of him, feigning innocence, pretending like this turn of events wasn’t according to plan.

“I keep going to kiss you, but I know that I can’t.” His brown eyes are aching as he confesses. She can feel the desire coming off him in waves, and although she knew what he would say, she wasn’t prepared to hear it.

It’s her who breaks the eye contact this time, staring down at their hands next to each other in the grass. She knew if she let him, it would be a line that couldn’t be uncrossed. After a minute of silent deliberation, she speaks confidently.

“Just do it.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

When their lips meet, the world ignites, the audience cheers, the background fades into the distance. It is cliché, but so powerful the universes within them fall to their knees. They kiss like their existence depends on it, like their only source of oxygen is each other’s breath. Desperation. Broken tension. Thoughtless longing.

Upon parting, his head falls to her shoulder, and she runs her finger through the curls at the nape of his neck. The air around them feels heavy, it weighs on their bones. The audience holds their breath.

“What?” She asks again, although she still knows the answer.

“I just know it means more to me than it does to you.” He sighs, his brown eyes still aching. Her mismatched ones meet the grass once more, but she speaks without hesitation, and contrary to what her heart is screaming.

“You’re right.”

The sound of a heart breaking is quiet, but tangible. The audience lets out soft gasps as the tension and sadness balls into one. She feels the breath he lets out on her shoulder, and he sits up, head hung low.

Her hand reaches for the side of his face, brushing her thumb along his cheek. She meets him halfway, and the kissing is tender now, it’s loving. The flickering of a candle flame instead of the roar of a furnace.

The audience tilts their head to the side, smirking sadly at the picture of her trying to lick his wounds, pretending she doesn’t have any of her own, pretending she doesn’t care. They hold each other for a while. The guilt of playing his feelings like a well-known instrument touches her slightly. They refuse to consider the consequences of their actions that will be evident come morning.

“I miss you.” He speaks softly, uncertainly.

“I know.”

Cut to the two people staying like this until the sun comes up, until she leaves without a word, and the silence is enough confirmation for him to grasp that she doesn’t want to continue whatever rekindling had been happening.

Cut to her crying the whole drive home because despite herself, she does [want to continue].

~ ~ ~

Our relationship started beneath the stars. His arm was wrapped around my shoulders when I told him everything I could never tell anyone else. Cliché from the very start, it felt like we had known each other in every life before this one. He made me feel safe. He made me feel like I could trust him. I wanted to trust him.

I felt inconsolably drawn, and firmly believed the way we vibrated on the same frequency signified soul mate status. If I said I didn’t think he was The One™, I would be lying.

If I said I didn’t think every person I had been romantically involved with who understood me on some level was The One™, I would be lying.

The stars became our home.

Maybe because we were from the same one.

Maybe because it was easier to love each other in the dark.

~~

Cut to a scene of two attractive people at a bar with friends. They have a slight history, but haven’t seen each other in a couple months. This is after their rendezvous with tequila and metal fences. It’s opening weekend of Fall semester, and they had just turned 21 over the summer break. Despite starting the night off at separate ends of the bar, exchanging only simple, shy hello’s, it’s as if there’s some kind of pull. Only really clear to the audience, they unknowingly (or perhaps entirely knowingly) get closer to each other after every cigarette or bathroom break. The audience sees them stealing glances, and can feel the tension sliding through their fingers.

Cut to a scene later that evening, where the two people have made their way next to each other, standing on the porch of the bar, sharing a cigarette. And each time they pass it, you can hear them holding their breath as their skin brushes. Close up to the porch railing, where both of them are holding on, each one contemplating whether they should slide their hand closer, latch on. It’s at this point, with their eyes sparkling, and their cunning, flirtatious grins, that the audience wants to lean forward and scream, “kiss already! For fuck’s sake!”. And the two people on the porch of the bar don’t comply.

Instead, they are brushing shoulders now. A friend joins the conversation, sitting on a bench across from them. She is now leaning slightly back against the side of his chest, and his hand has slid over on the railing, resting directly behind the small of her back. His hand is white-knuckled from his grip.

They speak to the friend as if their heads aren’t spinning and intoxicated, from both the alcohol and the proximity. She finds his hand behind her and rests hers atop it for effect, part of the conversation being held between them and the friend. When she goes to pull her hand away, he has interlaced his fingers with hers, gently. The touch is light, but behind their eyes there’s someone stoking the fire between them, bringing it to a dull roar. The audience is chewing their nails every time the two meet eyes, but they still don’t comply. They leave it there, in a masochistic state, both longing, but neither willing to make the first move.

~~~

He told me he loved me for the first time while star gazing. This is after the first break up, after the failed rekindling, and two months after opening weekend. His arm was wrapped around my shoulders and we lay against soft grass. I knew it was coming. He had been dropping hints for weeks beforehand.

And when he said it, I didn’t believe him.

I couldn’t.

To believe that he loved me was a danger that would incite a downward spiral. If I let him love me, if I chose to believe he did, it would mean allowing poison to pump directly to my heart. It meant he’d be able to touch me emotionally again. It meant giving up the last bit of control I had.

And the feelings weren’t reciprocated… or, rather, they were, but not for the right reasons. I had been playing him for so long, I had suppressed any of the feelings that dared to come up. I tried so hard to keep myself as separated from the situation as I could without tipping him off.

Despite my better judgement, I said it back. I wasn’t ready for the fire to extinguish, even though we were nearly half a year past our prime. We should have remained embers after the first break up. Loneliness and a desire for revenge were my betters.

~~

Cut to a scene of the two attractive people in a dorm room. She’s lying on the bed, playing on her phone, and frustration and anger are building a nest at the center of her gut.

She had been waiting for him to come back to the room for hours, after he had gone to help his sister close up at work (there was a bagel shop attached to their dorm building, and he was an employee). They had been full of bad feeling the past week and a half, and all she needed was for him to reach out and communicate.

Instead, he sits at her desk, using the computer, and ignoring her to flirt with his ex on the phone. She tries to ignore it, and she wants to say something, but she won’t. She tries not to let it get the best of her, to make her faux indifference apparent.

The audience watches with their hands over their heart and agape mouths.

The breakup is nearly tangible.

She is stewing.

He’s smiling, not giving a fuck, fully committed to the game he’s playing.

It’s almost an hour that passes of him on the phone, and she listens to him blush and flirt with the girl who was hell bent on their relationship failing.

Cut to the part of this scene where he has the nerve to crawl into bed with her, acting like nothing had happened. He continues with routine as usual, and it’s hard to tell whether he knows the emotional toll he’s taking on her or not. Regardless, he acts as though he doesn’t.

The bed is small; a standard, dorm room twin, but she folds herself, facing away from him, ensuring not a single body part is touching.

The audience is waiting for a confrontation, fight, break up, anything…

The two people don’t comply.

Her discomfort and the hot anger shifting beneath her skin is visible as she stares at the side of the dresser next to the bed, brows furrowed, lips pressed together in a straight line.

He tries to close the space between them. She wants to scream, but instead slides out of bed and leaves the room, occupying the small, circular table in the suite’s common area right outside the door. She is scribbling furiously in a journal, and cursing him under her breath.

Not long after she’s left, he sends her a text:

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Can’t Sleep.” She replies shorthand, making her emotional state easily deciphered.

“I think I’m going to just go to my dorm.” He answers.

“Kay.”

The sound of shuffling and the retrieval of keys is heard coming from the bedroom. Her chest is filled with anger and hurt and she feels her emotions building upon themselves, ready to spill over.

He emerges from the room and kisses the top of her head before putting his shoes on. She wants to crawl out of her skin.

He turns to face her.

The audience perks up in their seat, leaning towards the screen.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” He offers her a chance to be honest, and she takes it.

“No. But I will be.”

He looks down at his feet, then back at her, holding her stare. “Same.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.” She speaks softly, referring to his occasional issues with self-harm.

“I won’t. I’m going to go to sleep. You don’t do anything either.”

“No promises.” She offers no reassurance, and a blank stare to accompany that lacking.

He is standing in the doorway, door ajar and resting against his hip.

The audience knows this is a turning point… that it’s a the deciding moment.

Half of the audience (the romantic half) are begging him to stay — to be the person he was so good at pretending to be. They want him to walk over to her, to apologize, to grab her face and kiss her until they both feel vulnerable and safe enough to say what’s bothering them. And then they go to bed, and their relationship lives to see another day. They want love to win.

The other half (the realist half) recognizes him for the shitty things he did, and they want him to leave — to spare both of them from the clearly toxic relationship, where there are more games than open, well-received communication. They want him to walk out the door so the moving on can begin.

Cut back to where they’re having a stare down, and he’s standing in the doorway, and he has to know the decision he makes now will change everything, but it isn’t evident. He doesn’t wear the knowledge of it on his face. She does.

Her eyes are begging him to stay.

He sucks air through his teeth.

He takes a step.

The audience holds their breath.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m here if you need anything.”

And he lets the door close behind him.

And her heart closes along with it.

And she does something stupid.

The audience feels pity for her, but she isn’t surprised, because when a relationship just isn’t right, nothing can save it. Not love. Not even a soul connection.

And although it might not look like it, this, too, is a happy ending.

~~

I never believed I was special, which is how most long to feel with people like Parker — the sweet, wounded baby bird type; the concealed bad boy type.

I never believed I could cure him. I was never under the delusion that him saying he loved me meant I was the only one. What I knew was this: I was lonely, he would be easier to deal with as a friend than as an enemy, and him and I had an undeniable connection and chemistry that ignited the very air around us.

At the time, it seemed worth it. I didn’t care enough to let his mental illness affect me.

Until I did [care].

Until it nearly killed me.

Until we found out just how combustible fire is, and we blew the fuck up.

And this isn’t a tale about who’s at fault, but a very real account of a time in my life where I stepped closer to the person I needed, and wanted, to be. He is the one who changed everything: the way I viewed love and relationships, the way I viewed the universe, the reason I completely upended my life. When I look back at the person I was, I can point directly at this, and at him, and say that it was the turning point for me. Here is where the path was paved to make me become all that I am, for the time being.

I was a phoenix reborn from the ashes of our combustion;

the foundation of my new being is Hellfire, and proof that flames may cause insurmountable destruction, it might take down entire forests, but after the burning comes the purification. After the collapse comes the fertility to grow from the soil, and begin again.