Symptoms Of A Broken Heart

Chapter 1

"Winning that ticket, Rose, was the best thing that ever happened to me... it brought me to you. And I'm thankful for that, Rose. I'm thankful. You must do me this honor. Promise me you'll survive. That you won't give up, no matter what happens, no matter how hopeless. Promise me now, Rose, and never let go of that promise."

I hugged my pillow, my eyes glued to the screen as if I hadn't seen the movie at least sixteen times.

"I promise."

I chocked back a sob as the tears welled in my eyes. 

"Never let go."

"I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go."

I slumped over onto my side and cried into my pillow for the sixth time that day, the first time about something other than my own pitiful life. The Titanic gets me every time. It's pathetic really, the way I was acting. I felt like my world was crashing inward, and there was nothing I could do about it. 

In a way, my world was crashing if you think about it. Imagine your whole life, for an entire year, was centered around one person. And then suddenly, out of nowhere (or at least it seemed out of nowhere), that person is gone. out of your life. poof. Now what do you do? Who do you text? Confide in? Tell all your stories to? Yeah. That was my life.

So there I was, watching depressing love stories and crying into my pillow because I had absolutely nothing better to do. I curled up in my bed, prepared for a nap to drown out my sadness, when my bedroom door flung open and my best friend Michael came charging in.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" He screamed, loud enough I'm sure, my neighbors two houses down could hear her. 

"Sleeping, what are you doing here?!" I exclaimed, trying to look like I wasn't weeping into my pillow.

"This is ridiculous. Look at you, you're a mess! What have you done to this place? and when was the last time you took a shower, Jesus Christ!" 

"Shut up!" I yelled, my cheeks turning bright red.

"But seriously Ansley. When was the last time you left your room?" I shrugged and sat up in my bed and really looked around my room. It was a sea of used tissues, delivery food wrappers and boxes, and ice cream cartons. 

"I went downstairs earlier to answer the door for the pizza guy..." 

"That's it, I'm having an intervention. You've lost it Ansley."

"I am perfectly fine! I'm actually enjoying my time thank you very much." I actually wasn't at all. I felt like crap.

"You are going to get out of bed, go to the bathroom and take a shower, alright? Then I'm getting you out of this house." I groaned dramatically as I slowly rolled my self out of bed and crawled to my bathroom door. 

"Stop trying to be all manly and mascule, I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself!" I yelled from the bathroom, getting ready for my shower.

"Yeah, except you can't because I had to, BREAK INTO YOUR DAMN HOUSE JUST TO FIND YOU ROTTING IN YOUR OWN FILTH."

He was right, not just about the whole me needing to take a shower thing but about me needing to get out of the house. I hadn't left in four days, it was getting out of hand. So I took an extra long shower to make up for the time lost.

The thing about showers is when you're in there, you're either singing obnoxiously loud, or you're pondering how the world works. "What if this was all a dream? What if I'm not really alive, and I just don't remember my life before death?"