[Book One]
Agatha Miller Nash thought she was finally starting to have the perfect life she always dreamed of while growing up.
She had a job that made her feel proud of herself, the man that she would spend the rest of her life with, and a place s...
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T W E N T Y - O N E
The panic attack I had the night before drained all the energy and strength from me. It was quite ridiculous and naive of me to believe that I would never feel again the pain I felt the day I found out that the man I saw myself having a family with already had a family of his own. Last night that pain came in like a tidal wave that submerged me in a mixture of sorrow and rage.
Pulling the bedsheets off my body, I sat up, trying to stretch, but the simple movement made my entire body ache. I took a deep breath before finding the strength to stand up. Grabbing some clean clothes, I made my way upstairs to the bathroom in hopes that a warm shower would wash away the pain I had physically and mentally.
I have experienced a handful of horrible things in my twenty-five years of life, but one of the things I do not wish even on my least favorite people would be to experience panic attacks. The feeling of not being able to breathe, no matter how hard a person tries, is one of the scariest things a person can experience. The way a person feels afterward is not a pleasant experience either. It feels like a bad hangover that has left you empty inside.
Grasping the edges of the bathroom counter, I looked at my reflection in the mirror. The color was drained from my face making me look like a ghost with dark bags under my eyes. I could not recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror. How did I let a man destroy me the way Ian did?
I just wanted all these memories and pain to go away, but the harder I tried to let them go, the more they would come rushing back to me.
I could still hear his words from last night repeating in my head over and over again like a broken record.
I love you. I'm so in love with you.
My body shook as I felt my throat tightened, a sob threatening to escape. I sat in the middle of the shower with the water running while I let myself cry in silence. Letting go has always been a difficult thing for me to do, but I knew I could not keep holding on to something that was never real in the first place. The only problem was that my heart still wanted to hold on to the idea of the man I thought Ian was, and hearing those words coming from him made it even harder to let go. Every second that passed, I hated myself for letting the feelings I have for him come back.
Deep down, I knew those words meant nothing. A person cannot possibly love someone and still lie to them every single day for four years straight, making them believe the fairytale story they were living.
No matter how hard it gets, I have to let go of Ian. A part of me will always be in love with him for the rest of my life, but our story ended the same day it began. I know I am not perfect, but I do know my self-worth. I deserve better than the idea I had of him. I deserve someone that will love me as much as I once loved the guy who broke me. Someone who is willing to stay by my side as I get my broken pieces back together.
