They were able to talk back and forth for a couple of days. This helped his underlying dread to fade away, for the most part. Maybe he had staved off the pushing away cycle and hoped that he could remain on good terms, everything calm and friendly with their conversations back to normal. It was harder though. Talking wasn't as easy because he was using an outdated tablet that was barely functional. However, at least it was a lifeline.
After the third day of trying to communicate through the deprecated methods, she stopped writing him. His last message to her sat for three days with no response. He could see her in voice on another channel, but she was showing as offline to him. He knew then that he was in the push away cycle again, and he just couldn't take it anymore. He had done everything he could to make things right, to keep the communication open, to tell her what he was dealing with, and she couldn't be bothered to respond to him.
Enough, he decided. I may care about her more than I want to, possibly more than she deserves. He told himself he would rather have the surety of knowing that this was over and done rather than the never-knowing, always on edge, wondering what was happening between them. His life was difficult enough as it is. He had been alone his entire adult life. He lost both parents as a child so he had been isolated since childhood, barely making it through the system. There was no one in his life, such as it is. To him, there was little value in participating in this worthless, prison that people called life. He wanted her in his life. She had been his hope when there was none. Unfortunately, this emotional roller coaster was driving him to the brink of something very dark, and he didn't think he could take it any longer. These ups and downs, the chaotic relationship. It was too much for someone that just needed peace and quiet and calm in his life. He knew he could try to talk to her again, but he knew if he did that yet again, he would hear about how his communication needed to improve, how he just needed to tell her how he felt. He had already done that half a dozen times in the last few months, and never ended in a resolution where things were normal again. Things calmed for a time, but it was never a permanent solution. It always came back to confusion and disorder. What had become normal in this relationship was no longer sustainable.
His hope had been severed years ago, and the speck of light he found in her while immersed in his figurative tunnel of despair, she was the one thing he held onto, the one thing he needed and wanted in his life. He knew now, for certain, it was gone. Nobody that cares about another person would just leave them hanging, with no response, especially when he had gone out of his way to try to keep the communication open. The chaotic, confusing ride was over. He was sad it was done, but he had drawn a line in the sand and decided to finally embrace what he had been feeling for months. He accepted that, once again, he was not worth the effort, that his feelings didn't matter, that he was truly and completely alone. He pressed his lips tightly together in a small grimace and closed his eyes.
He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out slowly. He chided himself for believing that something good could happen to him, that some distant online encounter could give him hope that the world wasn't as truly awful as he believed. In the past, he had sworn to himself that he would never allow anyone close to his heart ever again, but he had let that resolve falter and foolishly believed that things would somehow find a way to bring joy into his life. She had managed to slip through the cracks in his palisade, and he felt disappointed in himself and chagrined that he had let it happen. This was the last time. Never. Again.
He looked at the tablet that he had worked so hard to get. All that effort to find a way to talk to her. He realized it was all for nothing. It was the final stage of the push, and his previous self, the one that had no hope, no love for the future, no plans, nothing. That part of him came back in full force. He sighed and powered down the tablet, knowing that the future that he had been dreaming about, was no longer an option for him. All was lost. He had to find his past self and continue living how as he had before this ridiculous fiasco. He had to live in this muted, dreary, hopeless life that he was forced to endure until he could shuffle off this mortal coil.
He formed a crooked grin that had no mirth at the ridiculousness of quoting Shakespeare. He put the tablet on the sofa cushion next to him. He stood up, turned off the television, dropped the remote onto the coffee table, and switched off all the lights in his apartment. It was far too early for bed but he couldn't keep his eyes open. He was starting to get a migraine from thinking about all this, and he just needed to close his eyes and be in the dark.
He walked to his tiny bedroom in the corner of the apartment, He stripped down to his boxers and crawled under the covers. He hit the power button on the small bookcase stereo next to his bed. Sometimes, when he was sleeping, he listened to music, occasionally audiobooks, and every so often he would listen to podcasts. It helped him fall asleep. He used to listen to the TV at night, but the audio on television and movies had gotten so erratic, it was impossible to sleep through the night with it on in the background. The light bothered him too, so he had switched to something with no visuals. Tonight he listened to an audiobook recommended by one of his somewhat deranged coworkers. It was about a girl who had lost her family and her home in an accidental fire while she was having a sleepover at a friend's home. Apparently, according to the coworker, it was about her guilt, and her pain, and the dark path she took to try to get some answers to what happened to her lost siblings and her parents and her pet hamster Snuzzles. He pressed play, starting the story's first chapter, turned on his fan for extra static noise in the room, and put his head on the pillow. He fell asleep before the first paragraph was complete.