I used to think his face was the reason I felt so compelled to write love stories—always searching for some way to express how he felt to me.
So, I know what he looks like, but last night, the face staring back at me was a stranger’s, and while I would consider myself an expert in heartbreak, that devastation was something new.
He had more tattoos on his arms, a new piercing on his eyebrow, and if I’m not mistaken, his tongue is pierced now too. He was wearing a different pair of glasses than the last time I saw him. Black browline frames with gold wiring. I’ve still never met a man who pulls them off quite the way he does. I saw him at Leo’s wedding, briefly and from across the aisle, but it wasn’t enough to study those tiny changes—to realize all that I’ve missed.
I lay in bed all night replaying his words to me when he took me home.
You fucking destroyed me.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Replaying every interaction I’ve ever had with August on a loop. All of the best days of my life. All my favorite moments.
“Violets are my favorite.”
“That’s because you’re a violet too.”
“You’re my person.”
“You’ve always seen me with the utmost clarity.”
“I’ve waitedan eternity to have you like this, and I don’t want to let it go.”
“So don’t.”
“Why areyou doing this to yourself, Lele?” Everett asks, breaking me from my reveries. “All we want to do is help you.We can’t do that if we don’t know what’s wrong. What’s causing this.”
I sigh into my coffee mug, because I ask myself the same damn question every day. Depression doesn’t run in our family, it’s never been something I’ve struggled with before, at least not chronically. Not outside the week per month that my uterus decides I’m its worst enemy.
I wonder if guilt can cut that deeply, or if this self-hatred was always swimming beneath the surface of my skin, and all it took was the right amount of regret to slice me open and allow that hate to begin seeping out. I know grief moves in stages, and I know it’s something the human spirit is meant to overcome.
I was one person before that day, and I became someone else after, but I refuse to blame all of my mess on that. I refuse to acknowledge that I may have ruined myself over someone who, when it came down to it, didn’t truly love me. If the roles were reversed, I don’t think that he’d be in my position all these years later. He’d have moved on; he’d have been okay.
Sometimes, I hate him for that. Then, I hate myself more because how can you loathe someone who died? What kind of person does that make me?
Enough time has passed that I can compartmentalize those thoughts. The grief and the guilt. They’re not eating at me every second, not an active parasite attached to my skin the way it once was. They say time heals all wounds, and maybe that’s true, but for me time is nothing but a bandage. I’m still bleeding beneath the fabric.
And it’s that blood loss that causes the bone-deep exhaustion I’m not capable of escaping.
I am so fucking tired.
I’m not so sad I can’t get out of bed. I don’t cry over him anymore. I may live in a perpetual state of self-deprecation, but even that active hatred—those final words I spewed at him—doesn’t echo through my mind the way it used to. I’m just exhausted.
I fail to see the purpose in doing much of anything, and maybe where motivation and ambition die, depression thrives.
I’m not about to voice all that to my brothers. I don’t know how.
I don’t want to see the disappointment on their faces, so I glance out the window instead. It's foggy. Cloudy. Like it may rain. This used to be my favorite type of weather, but dark skies are the equivalent to bad omens for me now, and I fear the storm raging has nothing to do with the air outside, and everything to do with tension in this room.
“You can’t ignore the question anymore, Elena,” Everett says. “I’ve let you do that for too fucking long. I’ve tried being patient. Supportive. Offered you a job and let you stay here and rot when you refused to accept it. Yet, you continue to shut me—us”—he references Leo in my periphery— “out. I’m not doing that anymore. Not only are you putting yourself at risk, but you let that man know where you live.” His voice breaks, and it’s enough to pull my eyes back to him. His gaze blazes through me, and I can tell he’s fighting to stay calm. “Where my fucking daughter sleeps.”
My eyes flutter closed as the sentence slams into me, reverberating through my chest. A familiar sting builds behind my lids, and all I can do is whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to get better.”
I can’t. I want to fucking scream.
I cannot be better. That doesn’t exist for me, and while I know it’s wrong and misplaced, I’m so goddamn angry at them for refusing to let it go. For refusing to accept whatever I’ve become now. Even my parents have given up on me. I don’t know why my brothers won’t.
“I don’t think I should stay here anymore,” I find myself saying before I’m able to give the sentiment much thought.
