The Love Letter

Chapter Nine

The days were passing, flying away like autumn leaves caught by the wind and carried away by the tide of oblivion.

But my mind couldn't obliviate what had happened. I couldn't forget it. I remembered. I remembered everything. Every single detail of the scenes that broke me, one from the distant, the other from the recent past. Every single day these scenes replayed in my mind, tormenting me and intensifying the pain and making it more and more suffocating. And almost every night they haunted me in my sleep like a recurring nightmare.

The first time my heart was broken, I grabbed hold of the anger, held it tight, and used it as fuel for my inner strength. Then I suppressed the pain. Then I succeeded and lived. But now... now was a completely different story.

Now I was both physically and emotionally drained. Now the anger only fueled the despair that overwhelmed me. Now the pain couldn't be suppressed. Now the pain was adamant and wanted me not to resign, to throw a blanket over it and pretend it wasn't there like I used to do, but to fight. Ahhh! And I didn't have the strength to fight it. So... I existed, surviving day to day. I didn't know when or even if I would ever have the energy to fight back, to deal with the pain, so I dealt the days. And they passed one by one, all the same, all grey, all filled with things I did to dull the pain, and all my limited efforts to do so ended in failure the moment night fell. As the darkness spread around me, I was even more helpless and pitiful, and though I realized what a wreck I had become, I didn't change a thing. I had no inner strength left in me to make a difference, so I repeated the cycle again, and again, and again, until... Ring ding-ding-ding-ding...

***

Ring ding-ding-ding-ding Ring ding-ding-ding-ding

Oh what a horrible sound!

Ring ding-ding-ding-ding Ring ding-ding-ding-ding

I reached to my right, from where the ringing was coming. I hit something firm, probably the night stand, and kept on groping for... Ah! Finally! I grabbed my phone and pressed the power button hard. It worked. The sound stopped.

And I got back to dozing with my face buried in the pillow.

"Oh, wait!" I mumbled and raised my head from the pillow. "I haven't set an alarm for... a month... or so?!"

Then what was that noise for?!

I struggled out of bed and picked up the phone, pressed the side button roughly, and when the screen lit up, I ran my finger across it to unlock it, and saw the cause of the noise that had woken me so rudely a moment ago.

And no, it was not the alarm. It was something far worse than that.

A disgruntled growl escaped my throat.

It was a reminder. Reminder for OUR wedding.

I shivered in disdain.

And stupid enough, I opened the reminder app.

"Today is your wedding with Greg" was written on the screen.

Seeing this, reading it... it spiked my ire and a feral roar escaped my throat.

"Aargh! NO! It's not!" I yelled at the phone and threw it in the right corner of my room where it hit the armchair backrest, bounced back from it, swung on the edge for a second or two, and then leaned over and fell with a thud on the shaggy rug.

I fell back on the bed, and pressed my eyes with fists to stop the tears of anger and pain from coming.

If I hadn't opened it... If I hadn't succumbed to curiosity...

"IDIOT! You're such an idiot, Rose!" I yelled at myself.

"Today is your wedding!" I repeated the reminder's text out loud in a crooked mocking voice filled with bitterness.

Then I started laughing like a crazy person, or better yet, like the crazy person I'd become. And what was so funny?! The irony of course!

A month ago I wished for the wedding to be over, and look what happened - my wish was granted! Of course, I wanted it to pass not to be canceled because my fiancé, pardon, my ex fiancé, had cheated on me, buuut...

"Be careful what you wish for!" They say. And it's awfully right!

I wished the stupid wedding to be over, to get it out of my way. And now...

I pulled my fists away from my eyes and started bashing the mattress on either side of me furiously, occasionally missing it and hitting the outside of my thighs instead. I pounded and pounded until my hands grew heavy and I no longer had the strength to vent my anger on the inanimate object and partly on myself.

"There's wedding no more, Rose! Isn't that what you wanted? Are you happy now!?" I yelled at myself. "Mm?! Are you h-h-hap..." my voice broke.

I rolled onto my side, curled up, pressing my knees to my chest, and fisted the sheet. Sobs shook my shoulders, but I couldn't shake the pain off, nor could I wash it away. So I did what I could. I let the tears flow, seeping into the cotton fabric, forming a bigger and bigger stain on it and replacing the raging anger inside of me with complete exhaustion.

And I cried myself to sleep.