I was reluctant to say yes, even though I wanted to be there, I wanted to see Brennan’s reaction. I knew Lukas would be there, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be ready to see him.
Zara’s smile faltered, and I watched her eyes focus on something somewhere behind me. And then, I felt the weight of his eyes. My body tensed up. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and look at him, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Eloise squeezed my hand in reassurance, and I was glad that Orion was preoccupied by my parents. Zara quietly stood up and after giving Mom a hug, left. And I swallowed back the burn of tears that threatened. I ignored Mom’s look of concern and instead focused on my breathing and not trying to let it all drag me under.
“Do you want to go back to the room?” Eloise asked.
I shook my head. I’d spent enough time there, and my therapist might have gently…albeit bluntly told me that I needed to stop hiding from my hurts. I’d spent over an hour on a video call with her, monopolizing the room while Eloise did whatever. I’d spent the first day wallowing with Eloise, the second day had been spent talking with my therapist and avoiding. Today was the first step of trying. Trying to be present and not letting the bad cloud out the good.
12 DAYSAFTER THE FIGHT
I spent the morning recounting the weight of the guilt and all the dreams I’d been having, to my therapist. She’d sat there and listened, and then had been quiet for a little while. I’d been drained physically and emotionally. A headache had formed and was a constant throb from holding back tears.
“I know we’ve discussed this before, but feeling guilty is a part of life. Things happen and we feel regret or guilt for having made a choice. Sometimes those things aren’t choices, they’reactions that happen to us, rogue elements that we can’t account for. Asher wasn’t just your partner. He wasn’t just a friend. Or a boyfriend. He was a multitude of things.”
“A cheater,” I’d mumbled.
“Yes, a cheater, too. But everything he was to you were monumental pillars in your life. I know we’ve talked about it in the past, about the why and how. But I want you to tell me why. Think about why you still feel such immense and immeasurable guilt.”
“People online?—”
“I don’t want or like cutting you off, but people online are always going to have nasty things to say. You were top of your field, you were a public figure at a young age. People online, strangers, they hold no actual bearing on your life. Focus on the personal for a second.”
I sat there, staring at the keys on my laptop, not wanting to meet her gaze while I thought about it. It wasn’t just the guilt over what happened.
“What…what happened that day was an accident. I know that, I watched the video…I probably watched it more than it was healthy to,” I said.
“If it brought you closure, then it doesn’t matter how many times you watched it. Are you still watching it?”
I shook my head. “No. It clarified a lot of things, as did that interview. And suddenly a lot of the guilt dissipated. And maybe that makes me a terrible person, that the guilt over him lessened, the sadness I felt, started to quickly fall away once I learned about him and Brittney.”
“It suddenly felt silly that I’d been mourning him for so long, putting my life on hold when he was planning on leaving, while he was actively cheating on me.”
She didn’t say anything when I glanced at her, so I drew in a breath and kept going. “And Lukas helped. He helped me see thefun in life again, that being sad was okay, but it didn’t have to rule my every waking minute.”
“Firstly, you’re not a terrible person for letting go of negative emotions. His actions brought clarity and allowed you to see past that day. It’s perfectly in line with human nature to feel all those things, to allow yourself to let go of the bad stuff, even if the reason is something such as learning an unfavorable truth. So why do you think you had a dream about Asher—a very traumatic one by your telling.”
“Did I ever tell you about how I heard my parents in the hallways outside of my room, whispering about how worried they were for me? How Mom didn’t know how to help me and it was hurting her?”
She shook her head.
“That hurt almost as bad as realizing in real time what happened that day, or having my knee operated on. I knew that my pain was eating at those around me and that worsened the guilt. It made me feel terrible honestly, and I think I truly started to hate myself at that moment. Even then I knew that she loved me and just wanted to find a way to help me, to see me smile again, to have this conversation.”
I paused and took a breath. My hands had started to tremble, so I clutched them in my lap.
“She just wanted me to find joy in life again.”
“Let’s get back to the dream. If everything was going better, and you were enjoying life and having fun with Lukas and your family, why do you think you dreamt about Asher blaming you, being aggressive towards you.”
“I think there will always be things that trigger the guilt and the emotions. I don’t think they’ll ever go away. And I’m not sure if I would actually want them to. I don’t want to forget him, he was such a huge part of my life. But I think I was finally, truly moving on. I was envisioning a life without him. Where he wasjust a part of my past, a handful of moments I was choosing to leave behind in favor of something brighter and vibrant.”
“It’s always been harder when I’ve been left with my thoughts. Lukas was helping, and just learning to live again has been so much help. I think I got scared. What I feel for Lukas…it’s so much. I’m terrified of it, but also desperate for it. It feels nearly impossible that I feel so strongly for him, that I can see a future with him, that I don’t want a future without him in it, but I’ve only known him for a few weeks.”
“For a huge part of my life, Asher was it. He was my first and was supposed to be my last. But he was my partner, then best friend and then more. It built slowly over years, and it felt like a natural progression. With Lukas it’s been explosive from the beginning. He’s sweet and kind, but when we come together, it’s like a star going supernova,” I said.
“I think the guilt comes from a place of what you consider to be the status quo for relationships. What you told me about Asher—he was a first for so many things, and you trusted him implicitly. You had to as a skater. For as much as you put your trust and safety in him, he did it in return. So his death and his betrayal was so much heavier, so much more impactful.”
