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I hate that the only thing I can think about is the day everything changed. The last time we spoke, nine years ago.

20

January, Nine Years Earlier

As soon as Sean found out he could come home for a two week vacation, he hasn’t stopped talking about it. He came up with a list of things to do three weeks ago.

1. Beach trip to Seaside

2. Camp & fire by the river

3. BBQ

We were never sure of his schedule or when they’d let him come back again. Planning our time together should be something that gives me joy—not the grief and pit I currently feel lodged in my stomach.

I pull my covers up and over my shoulders, curling into a ball. The music coming through my headphones is fighting for its life to drown out the yelling coming from outside my door. Eloise has been going at it for over an hour. She’s complaining about me to my dad, as if I can’t hear her. She should at least have the decency to talk about me in a different room. Decency has never been a part of Eloise’s vocabulary.

I’d hoped and prayed that after I graduated things would slow down. That we could become closer and she’d let go of the reins. I’m an adult now, but nothing has changed. I’ve tried to make sense of why she is the way she is, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. How you treat people is what’s important, and there is no excuse.

I hear “bitch” and “selfish” through my headphones every ten minutes or so.

My heart pounds, waiting for her to bust through the door and start yelling about me to my face instead of at Dad.

The worst part is this all began because she came home from work and I was watching a video on my phone. Two seconds after she walked through the door, I was somehow perceived as a dumbass and lazy.

This is my life. Being scared that the moment she enters the house I’ll be in the line of fire.

The one person who could ever make me forget about Eloise, was Sean. But Sean isn’t an option anymore.

I haven’t replied to his texts for two days now.

Jan, 12th, 2016

Wanna talk? 8:32pm

I should probably get to bed anyway. 10:22pm

Jan, 13th, 2016

Can we get matching swimsuits when I come home? We can be those people. 6:42am

My parents got a jacuzzi! We can use it when we do our BBQ. 12:52pm

Goodnight, sleep well. 9:27pm

I’ve been a coward. Too scared to tell him that I can’t do this anymore. It’s like I’m addicted to making my own hell.

Keeping him on this invisible string has been eating me up inside.

It feels like I’m constantly holding my breath, but every breath I do take feels sharp and painful, like I’m inhaling glass. Every time I draw in, it cuts deeper and deeper.

There isn’t any way to justify it. I know it’s cruel, but it’s easier this way. I don’t have to hurt him with my words, but without any at all. I’m a ghost.

There is nothing easy about breaking someone else’s heart as well as your own.

Sometimes I wish there was a handbook that could tell you what the right thing to do is. You can read all the self-help books you want, but I don’t believe they’ll actually help anything. They’ll just make me feel like a crappier person than I already do.

It’s as if I’m in two places at once. One is my heart. Hoping that everything will turn out alright. That maybe, just maybe, I could wait for him. The other is my brain—that’s telling me to let him go. After months of conflict between the two places, I chose the latter.