Set You Free (CANEM)

XXIX

(Sanem's POV - 1 Year Later)

Things returned to black and white after he left.

There was no more hope or joy left in the world for me. 

It has almost been a year and it's like he has dropped of the face of the earth. The loss of him for that length of time was unimaginable. The pain bore a hole into me that could never be replaced.

He left me, and he isn't coming back.

Some days I'm afraid to write because honesty hurts me more than anything.

It's amazing how many different emotions one person could make you feel. One day, you are on top of the world, at the peak of a mountain, with a smile on your face and a great warmth in your soul that makes your dreams fill with endless possibilities. 

And then, in a second, all of that can change. You are left with the remains, the mess that only one person can clean up. But that person is gone. The only thing you are left with are the broken memories. And they hurt. They hurt like hell. Because they trick your mind into remembering the beautiful moments. The moments that will never happen again.

To everybody I have spoken to, I avoid mentioning his name. Most people know not the speak of him anyway. As especially when everything was fresh, my lips would quiver and another torrent of sadness would start anew in my body.

Sometimes it felt better not to talk to anyone. The only person I knew I could always speak to was him, but he is gone now.

I hated myself for the silence, the internal torment, as if it sealed a pact between him and I. The man I should despise after what he did to me, but deep down in my heart, I still long for.

I fell in love with a man. 

His voice, his courage, his sincerity, his hands and eyes.

Nobody else had such things.

It was difficult to forget a man like him. I gave myself credit for that. He was a man of steel. He was a shield when people needed, like he would die for them. But it was when you broke through this shield that you realised how tainted he was.

Of course, I remembered everything as if it were yesterday. My body longed to be lusted after once more. Desired and yearned for. It wanted to feel protected in the arms of the man it loved but I cannot put myself through that ever again. I can never again put myself through the same excruciating pain that I had before. 

I didn't want to forget him, and let's be honest, I could never really do so. No matter how hard I tried. 

He was my first. My one and only.

But he had left me, and he wasn't coming back.

Maybe somewhere along the way it gets easier.

Maybe sometimes life just has to shake us up a little. Completely knock us down so we can replant ourselves and grow as another flower elsewhere.

Life will go on without him. Of course it will.

As people said, it was the ending, not the end.

I will rebuild my life. On the grounds he made broken.

A phoenix from the ashes.

I've been getting better recently. Time is a great healer. I'm eating more and I'm going out regularly with friends. It's nice to see old faces, sometimes I even catch glimpses of his friends but they try their best to avoid me. I don't know whether they do that to protect themselves or me but either way, I am grateful. It stops my mind wondering.

Eventually, I got around to finishing my novel, even though it took much hardship and pain through the last year. Yiğit was able to publish globally, the most successful shipment being America and it was successful. I couldn't believe it.

Maybe life is offering me a new chance. A fresh start.

Either way, I must take what I can get.

I will rebuild my life.

I label this my new beginning.