This Is My Story

||Gone||

[Dedication to TheOneWithABadName for making me the most amazing book cover I could've ever asked for!]

C H A P T E R O N E

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"Sometimes, there are days that are harder than the others. Sometimes, there are days where you just don't want to get up and either go to school, or work or whatever you are supposed to do, but at one point, you'll always find the strength to pull yourself off of bed and get your shits together.

I didn't.

It wasn't a question of will. I just couldn't. My body felt numb and my brain didn't seem to work.

I stare at the dirty white ceiling of my bedroom. My eyes are working, I am still breathing, but my brain just seems off. Somehow, a part of it still thinks that someone will come and wake me up, but there is no one.

It feels strange to feel alone and the barrier between me and reality is so thin, but I just can't seem to scratch off that film and get into the real world, I am stuck.

They say that to get over someone, you'll have to go through numerous steps, but I strangely skipped them all. The moment he was gone, I knew. I didn't accept it, but I knew and there was no phase of denial at all.

I won't be telling you how I oddly didn't cry at all, because trust me I did, but the thing is that I do not cry in front of crowd. It's actually very strange, I cannot seem to cry, unless I'm in the bathroom of my own house or under the sheets of my bed. Otherwise, the tears just don't fall off. I still haven't decided whether it was a good thing or not, but honestly I do not give a damn about it.

The telephone rings and the sound echoes in the empty house. I do not bother picking it up. I quite like that sound, reverberating on each wall of my now empty house. It is filling a blank space that I didn't even realize is present.

I say empty, but of course, there's the table in the kitchen, where I'm pretty sure my cold half-full cup of coffee is still waiting for me there, and the pile of letters is still gathered messily. The television in the living room, the paintings on the walls, but I just feel like it is empty. You would've maybe thought that I will clean the house and do everything to keep me occupied and to forget, but all I did was procrastinate and stay in bed.

I don't exactly want to forget actually, because it just doesn't seem right, doesn't it? Forgetting someone who once meant -and maybe still means- the world to you simply feels wrong. That person left a mark on this earth. That person left a mark in my life, I couldn't simply erase it from the board. I don't know much about psychology and the way things work, but I'm pretty sure that you couldn't get over the death of someone just like that. I kind of feel bad too, because I'm not what we'll call sad. I guess I'm just kind of nostalgic and yes, sometimes -or everytime- it did hurt, but I don't always feel like having him by my side because that will mean he'll suffer even more. Yes, I do miss him, but isn't it how it works? How life works? Whenever something happens to you, it's always for a reason?

I guess that's why I am at home, staring at my dirty ceiling instead of going to class. Because I want to figure out what it means. His death.

After a moment, the phone to stops ringing and the usual "leave a message after the bip" resounds. I don't expect the person to bother leaving a message, but surprisingly, I still hear the breathing of that particular creature on the other line.

"Uh, Hi." I still couldn't recognize the voice, but it is definitely a girl. "Grace? I know you're listening, so listen..."

I hate when people say such meaningless things, I mean really? "I know you're listening so listen"? It's like when you're asking someone how to spell a word like hieroglyph and they answer by : "Well, hie-ro-glyph, obviously". Things like that make me want to pull my hair off and scream.