About Jane.
I feel.
I feel something.
For the one who hates feelings.
And the one I am not allowed to feel anything for.
After promising myself to never feel anything for anyone ever again.
How could everything become so royally fucked up?
Somewhere between the houses on the old subway track, so beautifully restored and greened into this calm space above the buzzing city life, I sit on a bench.
Right this moment, I’d give anything to talk to Sophie. While she was my job, she was also a friend. A friend who always had the right things to say. Always positive. Always with a solution at hand.
A dreadful sensation hollows my chest.
I just hope she is alright. I had to vanish. Wasn’t allowed to look back. But leaving a person behind who you spent years with growing up, even if it was pretend, a job, it was my life. She was years of my life. And I loved her. I loved her.
A tear fights its way down my cheek, and I wipe it away angrily. I can’t fall apart like this.
“What would she say?”I ask myself. “She’d tell you to see the good in the bad. She’d tell you there's a reason things happen. She’d tell you to trust your path and be honest with yourself.”
Honest. With myself. While everything is a lie.
‘Well, you stop. And then you act differently,’I hear Sophie saying in my mind. It’s exactly what she’d say, with her big heart, believing in the good in people, believing in redemption.
A weak smile hushes over my face, and I close my eyes as I remember the last time I saw her. It was when she turned and laughed because she walked in the wrong direction.
And then I let the sting in my chest go, open my eyes, and get up.
I act differently.
That’s what I can do.
One step at a time.
When I reach my studio, I find it’s empty.
Relief spreads through me.
I don’t turn on any lights; there’s enough light coming in through the massive windows from the neighboring buildings' lights and the city's overall night glow.
I get a box of cereal, sit on the couch, and eat it straight out of the box in the half-dark.
I sit there and eat. No thoughts. Just being.
The door opens as El comes home.
Home.
She is drunk and crying as she sits opposite me on the couch.
“What happened?” I ask.
She bites her lips as more tears run down her cheeks. Apparently, this day sucks for everyone.
