Do We Let Go?

25| Last Hope I

A/N - Trigger Warning

Mention of suicide, self-harm and a graphic scene of death.

***

You just need someone who's willing to unpack the baggage you carry.

To prevent anymore threats to the baby, Dr. James advised me to stay at home and rest for at least two weeks before going back to work. I'd obliged happily. Working, writing my book and being pregnant at the same time was becoming pretty hectic for me.

Zach seemed quite detached since the morning. I decided to give him his space and time. If he felt like it, he knew he could talk to me. I was eager to know if he had talked to Sasha yet or not, but I kept my mouth shut.

Besides, I was also preoccupied with the fact that I was going to talk about it to Zach. I couldn't believe that I had come to trust him so much in such a short span of time that I was going to tell him the things that hurt me deep inside.

I felt scared. I hadn't talked about it to anyone openly until then, so it scared me a lot. I didn't want Zach to pity me or see me in any different light. 

One of my biggest fears was being vulnerable to people. Because when you're vulnerable, you can hurt easily, and I had suffered enough already.

But still, I consoled my heart and decided to open it up to Zach, hoping he'll keep the pieces of my heart I was about to give him safe.

When we got home, I didn't want to wait anymore because I'd already done enough of that for two years. Also, I needed to get the words out of me before I could chicken out.

In my haste, I couldn't even give Zach time to brace himself. He was taking off his jacket, setting down my overnight bag on the sofa when I started.

"As a brown girl, I'd known what discrimination could do to you first hand.", I said. He looked up, surprised.

I took a deep breath and rested my lower half on the wall across from him. This time, while talking, I had made up my mind that I was not going to cry. All those hours in the hospital when I had nothing to do at night, as I had laid awake, I'd decided quite some things.

One of them was...that I'd cried enough. That I'd mourned enough. That I finally needed to talk to someone about it, and...I just knew that I wanted to talk to Zach. So I started talking.

"I had to face quite some bullying in high school. Because of my religion and because of my color. It was horrible. But it also helped me toughen up and love myself stronger. Harder. My parents were born in an extremely conservative atmosphere, and even though they went against their society to marry each other...those traditions were so deeply ingrained in them they were compelled to pass them onto their children."

I took another deep breath. "While I was going through my journey of self-love, I was also learning to be an independent, feminist woman. My...my elder sister..."

I broke off. It was difficult to breathe, because the pain still felt so fresh. Zach nodded encouragingly at me. I took deep breaths again.

"Her name was Zoya. She was my role model. She was that one person in my life whom I could talk to about anything and absolutely everything. She was my rock. She was a ferocious and bold woman."

A smile smile crept up my lips. Zoya was truly a wonderful woman. If I could become half of what a truly beautiful person she was, I could consider myself very much lucky.

"She had the courage to go against our parents. She did something I couldn't have even imagined to have the dare to. She fell in love with a Christian man. Our parents outright forbade her from marrying him. His name was...Lucas."