Revelations (Formerly known as Promises and Lies (EDITING)

Chapter 1

One.

We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.

- François Rabelais

A r i a.

I put on my best smile as I set the coffee down on the cream colored tabletop, though I knew it didn't reach my eyes. It was more for me, to assure myself that I wasn't falling back into old habits. The constant reminder to assure everyone around me that I was fine and nothing hurt... It was childish. But I did it anyway.  I walked numbly behind the counter and started a fresh pot of coffee brewing, not really seeing what I was doing, but rather just doing it from memory.

My mind was elsewhere. Wandering to anywhere that wasn't here in this small, bland diner with its boring, mundane customers, who talked about the same mindless events. Everywhere I turned, I was smacked hard with the happiness and humbleness of everyone around me. I was constantly reminded of what I had lost. Like a loop from a movie scene,  flashes of a face— his face, with honey blonde hair and piercing blue-green eyes that reminded me of the sea, It burned through me.

It's been so long, and yet I can't quite get his image out of my mind. It's like it is branded in there permanently, scarring  and white hot. It is testing my sanity and every time I see it, his beautiful face literally kills me.

I walked around from behind the long counter, throwing my apron over the top and saying to no one in particular that I was taking a break before I  stepped out. The air was so much more cleaner than New York but it was drier. It didn't exactly feel like home.

In my three years of dismal life, I had managed to get myself caught up and tangled in every bad habit that one can come across. When doing absolutely everything that was supposed to make me numb and help me forget stopped working, I moved on to something else. Drugs just made me hallucinate, and I tried to stay away from anything that would make me see him. Drinking... I tried to avoid drinking at all costs because my father was an alcoholic. Besides, it just made me remember everything, and I was always trying to forget. I ended up too intoxicated to get my brain to stop thinking. Alcohol seemed to make time slow down, and I didn't need time to slow down.

I needed my days to be short and my nights even shorter.

My latest vice was smoking, and though it didn't fix the current situation, it took the edge off. And that was more than I could have asked for. I pulled out the light green box and took out a cigarette, lighting it up. It was a nasty habit, I knew that. My mother complained about the stench that clung to my clothes. My father complained about my health.

But I didn't care. I needed a release. I needed to feel the smoke trickle it's way down into my lungs. I needed to take the fucking edge off. The pressure to be okay was destroying me, and I stopped caring a long time ago about what was good and bad.

When the worst thing possible happens to you, what more is there to endure?

No one ever knows what their life would be like in the future, but I never thought mine would be like this. This wasn't supposed to happen to me. I wasn't supposed to be stuck in this perpetual state of despair, pain; albeit, suffering. I wasn't supposed to be pining away from a loss that shouldn't have devastated me so greatly. If someone had told me this was what my life would be like in the past, I wouldn't have believed them. I would have said I was the luckiest person in the world, and that I would be with him.

But it's funny how fast things change. It's humiliating to realize that a first breakup reveals how naïve I really was. It's hard to accept how right everyone is about a first love. How much it can cost a person to sacrifice and how much a person can lose. How lucky that person is when he or she finds it.