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“Please, Carrie! Listen to me! Now, I’m the one pouring my heart out and you’re the one walking away. While I don’t blame you, I want you to listen. I want you to understand. I’m not doing this for me and…I do have feelings for you, which is why I think it’s so damn important that I leave you the hell alone. You don’t deserve this aggravation,” I insisted, “But I don’t want to part on these terms. I want you to understand!”
At this, Carrie turned around, but her eyes were cold and bloodshot from crying. She furrowed her brow at me and leaned against a tree for support as she called back, “Do you think you’re the only person who has ever had a bad breakup?”
“Well, no…” I insisted, backing up slightly, trying to understand exactly where she was going with this. “I just…”
“No. You are not the only one who has a crazy ex. Yes, it sucks, and yes, your situation is particularly shitty, but it isn’t the end of the world, unless you let it. You can recover from this. I have offered to help you recover from it, yet you keep pushing me away.” Carrie stopped speaking then, and looked up at the sky, looking as though she was gathering her thoughts, before looking back at me. “Do you really want to know why I decided to go on this trip? Sure, it was fun, and it was exciting and the idea of it was adventurous, but under all that, is a reason that no one else knows.”
“Why?” I asked, inching toward her, cautiously to ensure that my getting to close wasn’t going to cause her to take off again.
“Because,” she answered, “I’m getting over something too. I tried to hold it in for as long as I could, and, to the credit of this trip, I haven’t thought about it all that much, what with trying to survive, but about a month ago, I got a call. It was from my ex boyfriend’s mother. I hadn’t dated this man for years, but he was my first love. My first…everything. She told me that he had hung himself and mentioned me in the note.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, feeling terrible for her.
However, she shrugged off my comment, before continuing, “Don’t get me wrong…This man was abusive, and he said hurtful things, simply to break me down. It took me years to get over him and to regain my self-worth. I tried my best to get away from him several times and when I finally did, everyone was always afraid I would go back. He was like a drug…He had always had a hold on me that was almost otherworldly. I could be so mad at him, but if he looked at me a certain way, my anger would just melt away.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean…” I replied, empathizing with her. “That’s why I was so blind. I was so in love with Sarah, that I refused to see the signs that something wasn’t right.”
“Anything that happened, would just get forgotten about,” she added, “simply because it was more important to me that he was there.”
I shook my head in understanding.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued, “The relationship was toxic. I will never deny that, but there were also good times…And those were some of the best times of my life.” She grinned in a sad way, “He was everything to me and certain places, I still go and think fondly of him.”
“I guess I never got to that point,” I insisted.
“It takes time,” Carrie admitted, looking at me for the first time in a long while, “But once it happens, the next time is easier and while you never forget, you don’t burst into tears, or get angry all over again. You simply enjoy the memory.”
“Is that why you came up here? To the mountain? Is this one of your places?” I urged, hoping that my questioning wouldn’t upset her.
However, seemingly pleased by my in
terest, she nodded, “It was a long time ago, but he and I took a trip out here and went camping for a few days. It was just him and I. He loved the woods and he knew a lot about them, so I felt safe with him. This trip was before he was abusive…We were probably sixteen or seventeen,” she giggled, “I got in so much trouble when my parents found out, but it was worth it.”
“Oh, so you were a little rebel,” I teased slightly.
Adamantly, Cassie shook her head, “No, not at all. That was probably the only thing I ever did like that…Our relationship was off again, on again, after that, since my parents weren’t too thrilled with his influence.” She rolled her eyes, almost looking like the teenage-self she was referring to. “The day I turned eighteen, he and I got a place of our own together. We worked our asses off and he got a job at his father’s company. Everything was going well, despite the parental disapproval, but then, he hurt himself on the job and had to be let go. He was only nineteen. Pain medicine, mixed with alcohol made him a different person. He never recovered from the addiction. It made him violent and depressed. Eventually, I had enough, and I moved back in with my parents. I started to go to school, more to take up time while I wasn’t working, so that I didn’t have to think about anything. I decided to be a paralegal, because I wanted to help people.”
“Wow…” I replied, unsure of what else I could say to her. I was shocked by what she told me and felt kind of dumb for how I had reacted to my own breakup. However, I didn’t mention any of this. I simply continued to give Carrie my undivided attention.
“So, when I got the call that he had died, and that one of his final thoughts was of me, it was devastating. I hadn’t seen him in years…I hadn’t wanted to see him in years, but in that moment, I wished I had been at his side. I wished I was able to help him…But I had abandoned him, just like he felt everyone else had abandoned him.”
“Carrie, you know that there’s nothing you could’ve done, right?” I insisted.
She nodded weakly, and I got the feeling that she had heard that attempt at comfort a million times before.
“That wasn’t really the worst part. Yeah, I mean, I was shocked, devastated and hurt, but I’m getting over that. What I had a harder time with, was when I told my roommate, my parents, and my friends, everyone gave a collective good riddance.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t in so many words, but through their half-hearted condolences, I knew that’s what they meant. No one would talk to me about it. No one thought I should even care. Everyone, almost seemed happy, that now, I would never go back with him, even though I never had any inclination to. I was a different person than I was then, when I was dating him, and I wouldn’t have put up with his shit anymore. Although, I wasn’t happy that he was gone. For the first time, probably since we were kept apart in high school, I missed him. I wanted to go to the funeral, but his mother, who never liked me much anyway, inadvertently blamed me for his death and was unwelcoming to the idea of me showing up. My parents told me that it would only dig up bad memories and my roommate told me that there was no reason for me to mourn a looser, who was never going to amount to anything anyway.”
“Damn…And you said, your parents were supportive?”
Carrie chuckled slightly, “Trust me, what they said was warranted. They tried to be gentle about it, but they had seen me hurt by him, so many times in so many ways, it took a lot for them to be as kind as they were about it.”
“And, your roommate?”
“That’s just the way she is…and, I mean, in their strange way, they were trying to help me, and give me the support that they thought I needed to move on from him, that wasn’t what I needed. I had already moved on. I was mourning for a life that I knew, better than anyone. I was morning for the man I fell in love with, not the abusive jerk who had shattered my self-esteem. So, I decided to take this trip, to get away from the people who were proving to be unhelpful in my grieving process and be alone with my thoughts. I wanted to create a new memory, where I could do what I wanted, be who I wanted, think how I wanted, without anyone telling me that I shouldn’t feel a certain way.”
