Life has reinvented the definition of rock bottom so many times for twenty-six-year-old Sadie Blake.
When her parents divorced she received a new stepfather, countless bruises and a major aversion to alcohol. With her stepfather she inherited a depr...
After a long discussion regarding the ins and outs of shame and how to hopefully get rid of it, Karen again challenged me to find an outlet to express every unspoken thing I have wanted to say to Camden since we broke up; and for once, it didn't seem like the worst and most terrifying prospect in the world.
Thankfully, I knew he was living in Adelaide again now, so there was no way I could force myself into seeing him in person like I did with Tanner and Morgan; leaving me with the only options being by phone—if his number was still the same—or message via social media. Being my least favourite platform for communicating with people, I was ruling the phone out as an option, compounded by my belief that if I heard his voice through a phone again it would transport me back to the night we broke up, and I wasn't sure I could deal with that again.
I knew Facebook was the easy and cowardly option, rife with opportunities for misinterpretation and misunderstanding, but it seemed like the only one I had left, and he made it easy for me to feel like a coward anyway.
Over the next few days I tried multiple times to draft some kind of message to him that encapsulated everything I wanted to say. I didn't have any hopes or intentions of getting a reply from him, or that he would even read anything I sent at all. But I knew I needed to say something, if for no other reason than to satisfy my own peace of mind.
Peace of mind, however, seemed more difficult to accomplish than I had imagined it would be, especially considering the very process of trying to attain it sent my mind back to the very place where it was destroyed in the first place.
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Then.
I'd arrived home with Madden, exhausted and wanting nothing but to sleep and not have to think about Camden. My phone was almost completely flat due to the heavy traffic it had endured by his unanswered calls and texts. I had stopped reading them hours ago so had no idea what the general tone of them had progressed to. I wish I could say that I didn't care what he wanted or what any of it said, but I hadn't yet learned how to turn my feelings off entirely, much to my dismay. If only there was a switch or something that I could flick on and off whenever I'd had enough. How good would that be?
I put my phone on to charge and caught a glimpse of what the most recent text read when the phone lit up with the electrical surge from the outlet.
Camden: ANSWER YOUR FUCKING PHONE SADIE OR IM COMING OVER!!!
I know it seemed ridiculous, given the aggressive content of the message, but the part that annoyed me most was his lack of correct punctuation, which seemed fairly indicative of just how done I actually was with him this time. Previously I would have caved and given him whatever he asked for whenever these types of messages came through, but not today.
Sadie: No. And no, you won't.
I sent the text and put my phone down, disinterested in reading whatever else had been sent or what his reply would be. I sat down on the floor where Madden was already playing with his toys, leaning back against my bed with my head in my hands, rubbing my temples in an effort to erase the skull-crushing headache I just discovered I had.
