KICK IT | JENLISA

112

Jennie

No textbook, plan, outline, schedule, or recipe existed for living with grief. Being widowed at twenty-two cursed me to spend most of my life without Taehyung than with him. Heading toward three years after saying goodbye, the guilt of surviving him crushed me more than losing him. It blurred the line between a spouse's influence and responsibility, festering and twisting lies inside my brain.

Like I could've prevented his suicide.

My if-only were the most dangerous weapon against my self-improvement progress.

If only I'd gotten help sooner.

If only I honoured my wedding vows... love, honour, and cherish, in sickness and in health.

No glory awaited a soldier who lost his off-duty battles, but I promised at his funeral that I would spend the duration of my life remembering him.

The world around me had other ideas. The unfazed world moving forward was cruel. Except for Irene entrenched in her sorrows and Jackson tethered to me whether he liked it or not, our friends and family moving forward were cruel.

Poor, poor Irene. She tried, but sometimes I was stuck too deep. Not even her kind words lodged me out of the emotions confining me in bed. I couldn't move forward, not without stepping away from Taehyung. Part of me didn't want to, and the rest felt that I didn't deserve to. Crippling pain was my life sentence.

The days after I left Lisa's house blurred together. I wasn't sure when I last showered, but I scrubbed my skin until it was swollen, raw, and pink. Scouring it wasn't enough, so I turned the shower to its hottest setting.

Searing needle pricks weren't enough.

Lisa. Fuck, why did I have to fall for a fucking cheater?

I glared at the water droplets beading over my forearms. She was under my skin. Her influence festered through every cell of my body. Her warmth, her touch, fuck she touched all parts of me. The ants-crawling feeling on my skin needed to be gone. I wanted to tear it off with my trashed fingernails.

Only the cocoon of my bed was a tolerable home for my aching limbs. My brain was numb with thoughts of inadequacy and the blame of uncontrollable events crushed my heart and rendered my body heavy, useless, and fatigued. Fuck, breathing was a laboured effort.

"Jennie." Irene's arms curled warmth around mine, her front hugging my back. "You can't stay here, drowning in guilt forever. And not just because we barely fit in this bed, and I can't remember when you last showered."

I had showered, hadn't I? A hand through my slicked hair suggested otherwise. Tears trickled down my cheek and blotted my pillow. "I can't go out there right now, Irene. It's too fucking hard."

Her hot, and humid breath tickled the back of my head. "In what sense?"

Closing my eyes at her making me spell out what a fuck-up I was within my own life, I heaved a sigh. "Keeping a job, losing my senses and getting involved with Lisa..."

"Stop." Soft rubs on my upper arm eased the taut muscles in my chest. "Jennie, you need to cut yourself some slack. You're learning how to live again."

Absent any other worthy response, I grunted.

"Don't grunt that tone at me." she said. "You're learning how to move forward without replacing what's important to remember. That juggling process is hard on your heart, with or without how much pressure expectation you're putting on yourself to move forward."

At my silence, she offered a soft hum. "It's not a snap of the fingers, Jennie. Broken hearts like ours need to be self-repaired, stitched with time and patience, so they can learn how to love again."