Page 2 of All The Broken Pieces: Vol. 1

Chapter 2

The concept of cheer flew away and all comprehension of what joy felt like is now a shadow. But we press on because what else would we do? Waste hundreds of hours on social media, crying out into the vastness, hoping for an echo of peace that never comes? Nah, not me. I only login to this beast when absolutely necessary.

Brace for impact. My teeth tap together as my jaw clenches. The little muscle at the bottom, back by my ear, twitches. The page loads and I’m in. Facebook blasts me with pictures from my past. I see them before I can click away to post the message for the student art show on the school’s event page. Clicking away is hard when I’ve packed up every part of this old life. I haven’t looked at these old pictures since last term when I logged on to post the Winter Art show for the school. And I fall for it every time. The barrage of images. I have to visually drink in everything I lost. It’s like passing by a car wreck without looking. So, I look.

There, at the top of my newsfeed is Zach’s beautiful smiling face—that angular jaw dusted in dark stubble with piercing blue eyes. Those lips tipped up in one corner with a boyish smile that promises everything. Memories not posted on any website flash behind my eyes. His voice. His lips on my neck, the heat of his kiss on my skin as our bodies tangled together. The way he yelled. How nastily we fought.

It happens so fast. One picture conjures so many memories and a myriad of emotions. But that life is gone. I flip past it, bracing myself and chasing away the remnant phantom feelings caressing my skin. Love and hate mingle—they feel nearly identical.

As I scroll down the page to get to the spot where I can click off into the school’s parents’ group, my newsfeed wags its tail trying to get my attention. It fills with pissed off people raging against the ending of their favorite TV series, then a bottle blonde telling me I should get her amazing leg make-up, and sure-fire diet ads. But then the bitch gets personal.

REMEMBER WHEN? The two words I avoid at all cost are plastered on my screen.

The words pop up, showcasing a picture from long ago of me and Zara in a boat at Belmont Lake. Best-friends, standing together with my arm draped over her shoulders. We stand on the shore before the docks, with the boathouse behind us. A gaggle of psycho-geese inch their way closer to where we were standing. Her dark eyes look out at me as if she were still here. As if she were just around the corner, in the classroom down the hall, where she should be.

The sweat rolling down my back increases. It has nothing to do with the weather. Anger is flickering to life.

Guilt.

Grief.

Fuck. Type faster. A shiver runs over my skin and before I can click away, I find myself staring at her oval face and olive skin. No one could do make-up like Zara. She made it look so effortless. Echoes of her laughter fill my mind, the scent of warm vanilla emanates from nowhere. The memory conjures so vividly that I can hear the faint echoes of her voice. Smell that perfume that she wore every day. Even though she’s not here anymore.

Scolding myself, I strengthen my resolve and press my palm to my forearm, and smooth the slick, pebbled skin. Erasing the ghosts. There’s a point where memories become so real, so inexplicably tangible, that it’s as if those horrible events never happened. But they did. In rapid succession my life ended because the two people who consumed it were suddenly gone.

If Zara lived, maybe there’d be a wisp of my former self left. A tiny ribbon, stretched thin, and threadbare—but she’d anchor me. Pull me back.

Zach is another story. He’s the reason I can’t remember to breathe. Everything between us was burned to the ground. Passion has two sides. Love and hate. I couldn’t make our marriage work anymore. It turned to cinders in my hands. I didn’t know why he became what he was. Why he drank himself to oblivion. Why I let him. I thought he’d right himself and we’d rebound. But after Zara died, there was no rebound for either of us. He lost his twin sister and I lost my best friend.

I didn’t think it could get worse, but it did. We fought. I didn’t hold back. I said words that cut deeply, trying to make him feel something—react somehow. Until one day I realized that I believed what I was saying. Zach and I were done. Anyone could see it. His mother told me weekly.

When she was nice, she’d say stuff like, “If you hold onto something so precious too tightly for too long, you’ll smother it.”

On a bad day, which was most days for her, she’d come in sharper, not holding back. Blame and anger painted every word she uttered. There was a time when I was welcome at her house. A time when I was loved. Not now. I reek of death, she says. It doesn’t keep me away. When Zach’s brother is out of town, I check in on her—despite her protests. She’s a battleax, all brute force when it comes to her mouth, but frailness and age have taken their toll on her body. I have no soul. What she says is almost true, minus some of the racial slurs, so it doesn’t bother me. Besides, she’s the only mother I’ve had for over twenty-five years. We’re family, like it or not.

This is my life now. Impossibly fake. And terrifyingly real. An invisible hand holds my barely beating heart in its frozen grip, while I plaster a plastic smile on my lips. Faking, pretending my way through the rest of my life. Because I have no clue how to move forward and I can’t go back.

My fingers hoover over the keys of the laptop, ready to strike. Facebook is a graveyard where the dead still live. The family didn’t want to delete their pages after their passing, which is understandable. Albeit painful for me. I’d never visit this site again if I had my way. But that’s not the way the world works. So, Facebook pops Zach up in my feed as if nothing happened. As if he were alive and we were still in love. As if he’s still alive and breathing. As if I didn’t tell him I hated him. As if those weren’t my final words to the man I loved for twenty years of my life.

The weight in the center of my chest is close to collapsing in on itself. A blackhole will take the place of my heart. I wish I was numb. That I didn’t care. But there are things I never should have said to him. And confessions I should have made with Zara. But it’s especially hard with Zach. We were so broken by the time we got to that day. The promise of more time was a lie. I thought we had more time to fix things. More time to make up. More time to laugh and move on with our lives. Separate or together, but there would be more time with him. Turns out that wasn’t true. Time is a thief and I was robbed blind.

If only one of them died, then I could have handled things better. But losing both? Within twelve months? It was too much. I didn’t realize I had a soul until it tore in half.

Now, I walk amongst the living but I’m dead inside. Hollowed out. I’ve figured out how to function this way. Don’t feel sorry for me. I envy the people who thrive living like this. They can make snap decisions without the emotional hangover that follows me like a stray cat. Always there, begging, jumping out of the shadows when least expected.