This book is dedicated to every single person who has ever needed a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. This is for the ones who are on a journey to figuring out how to live life fearlessly, who love to laugh, and who live to love.
Dear Jaime: Hurting
"We are all broken, that's how the light gets in." - Ernest Hemingway
Dear Jaime,
I never thought I’d be one of those pathetic weepers who get stood up at the altar, dress and all, on my wedding day. But that’s exactly what happened. He broke his word, and now I’m so hurt. How do I move on?
Hurting.
I read the four little sentences over and over again. I felt nauseous. I didn’t know whether the nausea was a result of the four drinks I’d had at the bar across the street before coming in, or whether it was the utter stupidity of the problem that was literally staring me in the face. Either way, I would rather have been puking into a public restroom toilet than doing what I’d promised my baby sister I’d do – her job.
I exhaled, puffing my cheeks out as the gust of air hit the computer screen in front of me. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. The beginning of a headache brewed in the back of my brain. The fluorescent light flickered above my head.
I was so, so bad at these things.
Take my complete lack of compassion and couple it with the inability to put my feelings into words, and voila – I now found myself an advice columnist, perhaps the one occupation I loathed more than a shrink.
Dully, I asked myself, for the thousandth time, how I had gotten here. How had I, the smart sister, the always-calm and always-rational Jenna Lakes, found myself in the office chair of the mysterious columnist known to millions of people as Jaime? How had I fallen so low from so high?
Granted, my previous job at a legal firm hadn’t been exactly thrilling, but at least it had been realistic. And it had required an actual degree. And brains. But this? An advice columnist? Me? A terrible, terrible idea. Clearly, I had jumped into this way too quickly. What had I been thinking?
Answer: I hadn’t been thinking. At least, not very clearly. My baby sister had asked me to cover her column months ago, while she was on her honeymoon touring the Caribbean or Bahamas or wherever it was that she and Chuck had flown off to together. And I had said yes, for two reasons. The first, was that it immediately had gotten her to stop talking about Chuck and dolphins and beaches and Chuck.
The second reason, was that I had been looking for a job without much success, – thanks a bunch, economy – and I’d desperately needed the money. The single faint glimmer of positivity I saw from where I was sitting right now, was that this job paid a ridiculously large amount of money for a relatively small amount of work.
All I had to do was write one response a day for the next three months, until my sister returned from her honeymoon, at which point she would free me and the remnants of my soul by reclaiming her position at the paper as the most widely-read advice columnist in the country.
No matter how many times it happened, I still was never prepared for the sharpness of the pain I always felt when thinking about my sister on her honeymoon. I brought a rather shaky hand up to my chest, and rubbed at the area where my heart was beating a war-beat beneath my ribcage.
Just three days ago, I had watched my sister get married to the love of both our lives, enduring it all with an agonising smile plastered to my face for the whole ten hours. Both Leanne and Chuck had left for their ridiculously long honeymoon the day after, and I hadn’t been sober for more than a minute since then.
Unfortunately, today was my first day at her job, and I couldn’t quit or leave because I’d given my baby sister my word. She had staged it as a surprise attack, and had caught me completely off-guard by asking me to take over her job, instead of asking me to take over arranging the flowers for the wedding.
I had tried to participate in the wedding plans and discussions as little as possible, and I had always changed the topic whenever Leanne had tried talking to me about dresses or flowers or plane tickets. Or Chuck. Lord, I avoided any discussions about Chuck, especially with my own sister. Avoidance was my favourite approach to any problem, and it didn’t always work, but I was convinced that the less I knew about their plans for the future, the less hurt I’d have to feel in my own future.
An unwanted mental image of Leanne and Chuck feeding dolphins while sneaking kisses, flashed through my head. I cringed and stared desperately at the screen in front of me. All this thinking about how I’d gotten here, wasn’t helping me whatsoever in answering the problem with which I was now literally faced.
I slowly blew out another breath as the pain and bitterness faded somewhat, ignoring the now-dull ache brought on by thoughts of my bubbly, sunshiny little sister, happily married to the love of both our lives.
I re-read the tiny little paragraph.
Dear Hurting, I typed. Rejection? Pain? Been there, done that.
Then I quickly pressed the delete button until I was staring at the blank line once more.
Dear Hurting, I tried once more. It’s nothing that a gallon of ice cream won’t fix.
Snorting, I deleted that, too. Damn this.
Damn everything. Damn my life which I could never go back to, and damn Leanne’s completely moronic job as the gender-neutral advice columnist known as Jaime.
Internally, I began quietly panicking – something I never, ever did. I’d been so confident that I could do this, up until fifteen minutes ago. I’d agreed to help my baby sister out, but I hadn’t given this particular job much thought. Or any thought, really. I didn’t consider what my sister did a real job. Advice columns were so completely stupid and pointless, that I’d believed that creating stupid and pointless replies would be easy, simple and straightforward. Now I knew better. It came as a shock, but now I knew that some effort was actually required in constructing froofy, sappy, replies.
I sat now, tapping my mouse at an irritating rhythm. I was completely drawing a blank as I stared at Hurting’s question. I mean, by all accounts, it should be the easiest thing in the world – sympathetically agree with how rotten life is, subtly remind them that they’re alive (if that still applied), and give them a hallmark farewell sentence where you tell them that there is still light in this dark, dark world. Or something like that.
I’d made a point to avoid my sister’s obnoxiously popular column, located on the Inspiration for the Modern World page, and instead always flipped to news of fires and bombings. Leanne’s column was too... mushy and fluffy for my taste. We were such polar opposites.
I now gritted my teeth together and stared at the words before me. They looked like they were insulting me. It was just three little lines. Four tiny sentences. And one question which really shouldn’t be this hard to answer.
I nearly had a heart attack when Leanne’s phone – I guess it was my phone now – rang. Gingerly, I picked it up.
“Hello?” I asked warily, unsure of what I would have to deal with on the other end.
“Jenna?” a familiar voice gurgled at me.
I closed my eyes, massaging my temple. Of course she had to call. Always sweet, always concerned, always so helpful. “Hello, Leanne,” I muttered in a monotone. She wasn’t my favourite person in the world right about now.
“You sound stressed,” my sister’s concerned voice persisted. “How’s it going?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, working to sound happy, “And it’s going fine. Just great,” I enthused as much as it was possible for a person with my personality to enthuse.
“Uh huh,” Leanne said disbelievingly. “Look, maybe this was too much to ask of you from the very beginning. Maybe if you read me the problem, I could talk you through it the first time and then you’d—”
“No,” I cut her off. I was doing this on my own, if it took me all night. “What kind of a vacation is that? I said I’d take care of it, and I plan on doing just that. In fact, I’m already done for today.”
I closed my eyes and prayed to God.
“You are?” she sounded absolutely shocked. “Can you read me what you wrote?”
“Oh, I’d love to,” I said regretfully, “but I already sent it to the editor. Mr. Hunk.”
“You mean Mr. Funk?”
“I don’t care,” I said, and it was the first thing I’d said this entire conversation that I really meant. “I’ve written the reply, and you’ll get to read it tomorrow, in the newspaper, just like every other person. Have a great life, Leanne,” I babbled over her, ignoring her frantic protests, “I’m sure Chuck is waiting. Say hi to the dolphins for me.”
I put down the phone with a sense of relief. It wasn’t often that I felt relieved. Just for good measure, I leaned under the desk and disconnected the phone from the wall. Much better.
Straightening, I bashed my head into the desk’s edge. The resulting crack was so loud that I could hear it echo in the way-too spacious office.
“Ow, son of a priest!” I muttered venomously under my breath for a good minute, letting out all my steam.
When the pain reduced to just a dull throbbing, I turned to the computer screen, fuming, not at all a sympathetic person in that moment.
Well you know what? Too bad. I wasn’t my sister, and soon enough, the rest of the world would know that. Dear Jaime was about to have a change of heart – I was moving it to the dark side.
Clicking on the flashing cursor, I began to type furiously. Only two minutes later, Jaime’s indignant response was sent. And I was done – for the day, that was.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
First, I have to thank ANYONE reading this, that you've given this story a chance. Not to worry - I'm working on finishing the other stories, but I've had this one ready for so long, that I finally decided to publish it. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for clicking on this chapter, reading to the bottom, and giving my writing your support. I would have given up on writing years ago, if it weren't for each one of my readers. I love you all so much.
I will have a very important author's note in the next chapter, so please check that out when it comes out! Wishing you a wonderful, wonderful week, and I'll be beyond happy for any feedback and thoughts about this chapter/story!
With much love,
Ella <3