The Reason (1)

Chapter 11: My Tears

****This chapter may include some triggering topics for some. If you ever feel this way please seek help because there is someone that will listen and help. Like I have, because trust me it gets better because someone will always be there wanting to listen and help, you are not alone. There is always someone, all you have to do is find them.

Summer was coming up, I was going to spend a month in the countryside of New York, or upstate New York. I'd been looking forward to this trip for a long time, but now that I had David I didn't want to leave. But I knew I needed a break, a break from things that reminded me of them. Little did I know it wouldn't stop, I would be forever haunted by everything. Sometimes I wished I never would've meant them in the first place, turn them back into strangers, maybe I would be happier that way. I was worried about leaving for so long, but when I saw David I wasn't worried anymore, he was there.

The day before I left I hung out with Avery, Garrison, and David (as a double date), it was one of my happiest days in a while. I smiled and laughed harder than I ever did that day, they helped me find joy in life again. When I got to New York I was miserable at first because of everything, because I had time to myself to think about everything which I hadn't given myself. It was getting harder to smile or live with the pain, but there were moments where I truly felt happy again but it never kept.

I knew then that it would take a lot of time and healing for me to ever feel okay again, I just wasn't ready for it. I went places that my old friends and I went when they were up here with me, it didn't feel the same though, I felt the ghost of our friendship, of their smiles and laughter. It made me feel empty, I wasn't the only one that noticed that I was only a shell of who I was. My aunt, the person I was staying with for the summer, started noticing she was there and she helped me trying to make me happy. I felt bad because she was trying so hard, but nothing would work.

I would lay in bed for hours at a time crying, I started to feel everything I was trying not to feel, everything I was holding back came back in a rush. I felt defeated, but there is always light at the end of a dark tunnel, and there is also someone that will be there to help. I started opening up to my friend Avery with the problems I was having, and she helped more than anyone before. She was there for me, and I appreciated it more than anything. But at the end of the day, I was only me, and that never was enough for me, I always wanted more.

I seemed to die a little every day, looking forward to the future and trying to be happy, but when I was alone, I was truly alone. Sometimes I sat in silence asking myself where it went wrong, where I started to hate myself, I could never answer that question. I guess I always had hatred toward myself, but I was just suppressing it, I had distractions. In the dead of the night, everything hit me, I was scared of the night because I had no one to talk to, I used to have them, and they would talk to me every night making me laugh and smile.

Now they're gone. I feel like when they left a part of me died that day. I felt broken, I would lay in bed at night looking at the ceiling, waiting for a notification, a message from them, hoping they would change their minds, but I never got that notification. I would continue to look for that notification every day, I would continue to hope for that notification. But it was time to go, to let go of them, to let go of that hope because that hope was killing me slowly every day, but I didn't want to let go.

I felt frozen in time, while everyone moved on, and lived their lives, while everyone else was happy, I was just there watching. I longed, I ached for that kind of friendship again. Every time I thought I got a notification from someone, anyone, asking "how I've been" or just "Hi" I felt my heart skip a beat, just to realize it was a notification from another game or app. I spent all day reading books, trying to find comfort in the characters' lives and trying to find happiness in their lives.

Trying to escape mine.

I would stare at photos of us, I looked so happy in those photos, but when I looked in the mirror I saw a different person, I didn't recognize myself anymore. I longed for someone to hold me and tell me I was going to be okay, that everything would work out for me in the end. I longed for the warmth in their smiles, I longed for the conversations that we had with each other. I looked out my window with tears in my eyes, watching the tree sway back and forth and the rain coming down. I watched as the chicken's on my aunt's lawn roamed.

Everything was so peaceful.