The well of sadness

Matthew moved his head to the right so he was now looking directly at Katie who had just spent the best part of two minutes looking at his side profile whilst he'd desperately attempted to look anywhere in the room but at her. He could see her eyes were at breaking point from the well of sadness that lives permanently inside her waiting for the next storm to push her water table over the edge. Mathew was the black cloud that so often caused the floods and carnage that followed the storm. He didn't purposely mean to do so, it was like he carried with him great Shakespearean tragedies in his armoury and Katie was the most susceptible of types to each and every one. Instantly upon seeing the hopelessness etched on her face he felt guilty and went back to looking anywhere but at Katie. He thought he'd try the floor some more, that seemed as good a spot as any. It made him feel less vulnerable, like looking up could somehow leave him open to an unexpected attack. Somewhere buried away deep inside him his DNA most likely still had primaeval coding that subconsciously kept him safe by allowing him to instinctively not expose his neck. Or maybe his head was simply weighed down by the heavy thoughts of guilt that in that moment just like Britney Spears, he'd done it again. Oops. Not that Katie would have been capable of such a thing as attacking him mind, but still, his subconscious took no chances, his eyes remaining fixed on the floor.  

“Mathew please look at me,” she asked him. The tone of her voice conciliatory but tinged with an added underlying sense of pleading. He didn't want to. His inner six year old was telling him it was too dangerous and they'd get in trouble if he did. 

“Matt.” This time no request, no function to perform. An appeal maybe, said softly, the abbreviation of his name used with a less potential impending sense of doom. It still felt like a trap. ‘Don't look,’ the voice of the inner child was still telling him like he was being exposed to a horror film at too tender an age. Problem was he wasn't that six year old boy anymore. He decided to be brave, to be a man and turned his head back. Katie tried to force a smile but something inside her must have sensed if it crept any wider that the buckets collecting the sadness from the well would have been tipped forward and she stopped herself short but she hoped the little curls at the edge of her mouth would have registered as an act of kindness in his brain if the message could only make its way through all the strawberry jam and other nonsense that seemed to permanently live between his ears. 

“I love you,” he said. There were those three little words that put together in the right order and said with real conviction and more importantly with truth, can feel so much bigger than they are. 

“I… love … you,” he said it again, slower this time as if trying to say it with more belief and conviction. Who did he want to convince though? That was the Million dollar question, her or himself? 

“Matthew, if you tell yourself something enough times you'll start to believe that it's true. It doesn't necessarily make it so though, do you understand what I'm trying to say? Even lying to yourself enough times can make it feel like the truth. All you have to do is say something often enough and you'll convince yourself. I don't want that from you.”

Matthew loved the way that 99 times out of 100 she used his full name. She rarely called him Matt, only to try a different tact when she couldn't get through to him as if there was a second version of him inside who might be prepared to listen if she called out to him instead. His name was never shouted at him by her like it had been every day of his childhood when nothing he could ever do was right with either of his overbearing parents. She never called him Matty or Matteo. She never dropped her t’s with any words so that Coventry remained just that and not Covenree and even Matty, which he disliked immensely, was better than Mahhee which sounded like a small village somewhere in the depths of India. He loved that she spoke properly in full rounded sentences unlike his mates' girlfriends. About serious subjects too, not about makeup and stuff. You know, like what was happening in the world. Grown up stuff. Stuff that really mattered. There were lots of little things like that which if all added up together should feel like a lot to love but even if they did he knew they wouldn't amount to the love she had for him. True love. Why she loved him so he had no real idea, he just seemed to make her permanently miserable which he hated himself for more with every passing day.

Sometimes when he was alone with nothing but the sound of his own thoughts to keep him company he wondered if maybe he did love her and was just afraid? Afraid he'd fuck it up, afraid one day she'd stop loving him, afraid they'd end up like his mum and dad at each others throats every waking minute of the day only stopping to shout his name the way Katie never did. She made him love his name again, with the softness in her voice which had grown into love from her side. Even when he went AWOL for days and blanked her texts and calls, all the time topping up that well of sadness. Even then she didn't spoil the way she said his name. He loved her for that. She deserved better than him. It's the Bennett family penchant for self destruction he told himself. No Bennett male had ever held onto anything worth keeping so they didn't invest the time in learning how to or even bothering to try. ‘Keep your guard up son,’ his old Grandad had taught him as a nipper with a massive pair of old leather boxing gloves on his little hands that probably were as old as the war and were so heavy he could barely lift his arms up to make a guard let alone keep one up. His Grandad had of course meant it in the literal context of the boxing ring, not as a metaphor for life or to permanently tattoo out the eyes of your heart so that it could no longer see. Nana Rose used to give the old timer a little clip round the back of the head if he gave her any lip and his Grandad would giggle like a naughty schoolboy and he'd say give us a kiss and she'd tell him to bugger off, then remind him that he's not to repeat those types of words, give the old fella a little peck and tell him you're a daft sod. They were capable of love. They should have been role models for him, but his Grandad wasn't cursed with being a Bennett. He just had the misfortune of his only daughter marrying one. If only someone had told Matthew that he was free to choose who he wanted to be, that he might have to carry the family name but he didn't have to become the latest in a long line of vessels to store the Bennett self-destruction in. 

Matthew stood up as if saying it on his feet might help her believe it but more importantly help him believe it too. 

“I love you,” he said trying to sound like the words really did carry the full weight of conviction and meaning to them. Katie gave a little shake of the head and even that tiny little amount of force proved too much for the well of sadness and the tears rolled down both her cheeks. He said it again moving both his arms up and down in front of him imploring her to believe him, imploring himself to seek the truth as to whether he really did love her but really it was just the little boy with the heavy old boxing gloves on his hands still weighing them down all these years later and every time he lifted them up they shot back down belying the fact that he wasn't strong enough to keep them there, let alone be capable of loving her. Just as he wasn't strong enough to truly love her, neither was she strong enough for the both of them, nor was she stupid enough to believe him, or even for that matter desperate enough for his words to be true even if she secretly hoped deep down that he did mean them.