Hoping [h.s.]

Woven Strands | Epilogue III.

song for this chapter:
Lover Of Mine - 5 Seconds Of Summer
(link added if you'd like to listen while reading!)
___________________________________

Present Day
(4 years later)

Jarelle

Throughout the years, I've always made a habit of going back to those journals and reread every entry.

The good and the bad.

They never ceased to remind me, not only of the imperfections life has thrown my way, but the surprising ways I managed to overcome each trial and tribulation.

As I dragged my fingers through the bookshelves filled with worn out pages, they always gravitated towards the same pages I can cite from memory at this point.

Summer 2017. The Flower & Her Sun.

The soft suede texture of the journal's cover still remains intact, nothing but its small markings left slightly bled in after all these years.

The faint hearts, dainty flowers and the initials of our names remain in the top right corner of it's front page, reminding me of the bittersweet bliss my younger self rejoiced in, even if it was very short lived.

Throughout these past four years, I've carried these words, this story with me to every place I went to as a reminder of who I once was in comparison to the woman I am now.

After Harry and I went our separate ways, it took me a bit to get used to the feeling of not having him there as my safety net. Any time anything would go wrong, looking back and not seeing him there to help me put the pieces back together was something that surely kept pouring salt onto the open wound that just kept reopening each time, more.

I eventually began therapy sessions in hopes of trying to find ways in which I could meet my goal of rediscovering that love and self worth people preached about, the one I couldn't I somehow couldn't find within myself.

On our first few sessions, I remember she kept asking me questions about my childhood, all the way up to the moment I stepped through her doors. These questions came with the purpose of trying to pinpoint the source of my issues and how we could solve them.

Every time she asked me questions about any time where I felt the closest thing to ever loving myself, I kept coming back to him.

Every. Fucking. Time.

Eventually, I brought in the journal that held my favorite story so Nia would have a read of every entry I ever did of my Summer with Harry.

She was completely astonished with what she read and every intricate detail of how he made me feel and was quick to say how she was proud of the both of us for realizing how, even thought it was a brief time in my life, he helped me realize something that it would've probably taken me ages to acknowledge.

Or maybe never.

If there's something I'm grateful today, it's me keeping that journal.

I once told Harry when we met that if the journal had more bad entries than good, I burned them.

This one wasn't the opposite. I never stopped revisiting it because despite the bittersweet ending to such a wholesome tale, it held my happiest memories in the form of a person who held such a significant place in my life even after four long years.

I kept digging into those small details I wrote that reminded me of the most mundane moments we shared. If I closed my eyes tight enough, I can still feel the way the warmth of his skin begged to bleed against mine in an attempt to comfort ourselves in any way.