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I got here last night and merely started to unpack the bare minimum, and already the room looks like a Yankee candles’ store exploded all over it.
My tiny apartment back in Chicago was full to bursting of every sleep-enhancing contraption known to man and I've pretty much brought my organized chaos back home with me here in Connecticut, from my essential oil diffusers, to my delta waves binaural beats generator, down to the red spectrum lightbulbs currently bathing my room in my dad's house in their supposedly relaxing glow.
I practically live on chamomile, valerian root, and Magnolia bark tea. Even now the white noise's going, the oil diffuser is puffing out steam, the calming scents of sweet marjoram, bergamot, and lavender filling the room.
I can't say that all the things I use do nothing at all to aid in regulating my circadian rhythm, that would be a lie: they help a lot, but not all the way, especially when I'm stressing out about something.
And right now I am. Big time. New Life. New Job. Old city. Too many freaking memories haunting me.
A textbook case of PTSD-induced insomnia wouldn’t be necessary for anybody in my shoes to feel nervous and be wide-awake at night, I guess. But I still don’t like feeling this way.
I look at the screen of my cell. It's two a.m.
A nice cup of tea could do me good, but I don't want to disturb my dad and Fay, his girlfriend, as they sleep. She normally doesn’t stay the night. it’s not part of their arrangement, but she said she wanted to spend the evening with us and then the weather turned and of course she had to sleep over.
My father's utterly awesome and he's always game for a late-night chat, but he would worry for me if he saw me wandering the halls, and his girlfriend would… well, I don't know what she would say or do honestly. She's nice-ishbut we have never spent this much time together under the same roof before, and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. It's bad enough that her huge Himalayan cat, Diablo, already seems to hate me and does nothing but glare and hiss at me.
I slide my phone back onto the bedside table, my eyes darting about the room. The floor is littered with duffle bags and cardboard boxes.
I remember the last time my childhood bedroom looked like this, many years ago, all my stuff packed and piled in boxes. I can see it clear as day, the acceptance letter from Yale in a place of honor on my desk, my collection of mini Harry Potter stuffies holding court around it. Isobelle, Flora, and I in the middle of the room, holding hands, laughing, talking a mile a minute about all the things we would do once we moved into our shared apartment in New Haven.
My throat tightens and my eyes sting with tears as I think of my best friends.
One of them I'll be meeting tomorrow morning for breakfast, the other hasn't been with us since the night of the fire.
When we were little, we bonded over being named after Disney characters, something that was adorably cute in first grade, but not so much in high school.
My mom had named me after the one princess my little feminist heart could never stand, the one who wasjust there, was completely clueless about her destiny, and then slept on the scene for most of the movie.
The reason why she picked the name was romantic enough though. Her name was Leah, my dad's name is Stephen and they had fallen in love and lived in Briarsville, so it was kind of a given I 'had to be' Aurora.
She truly loved that fairytale and for her everything in life was fate.
I do have a second name, Delia, and for a while, I thought I would ditch theprincessyname and go by it, however, I could never do that to my mom.
She died when I was little more than a toddler and I have no memories of her, but my dad was —and kind of still is— so in love with her that he kept her alive for me. Tons of stories, family footage, and albums upon albums of pictures of us filled my childhood, and even if she was never more than a beautiful picture on my nightstand, even without knowing her, I loved her just as dearly as my dad did and so I stuck with Aurora —or Rory— despite my peers' constant mocking in school.
Isobelle too faced her share of bullying over being a 'bookworm named Belle', the princess with the raging case of Stockholm Syndrome. For a while, she considered going with Izzy rather than Belle, but the nickname was her grandma's favorite and she could never disappoint her and of course there was no way she could forgo her love of books —she's a librarian now— so she braved the never-ending jokes and pranks with as much grace and composure as she could.
Flora was different, her last name being Merryweather, she was teased mercilessly, but she didn't care. She would answer hatred with sweetness, but at the same time she never showed weakness, and there was always a smile and a ready joke on her lips.
My heartbeat picks up speed again as I see Flora's grin and her signature dimples in my head, and once more the memories from seven years ago try to drag me under, stealing my ability to breathe and reason.
Back then, we were barely twenty and inordinately proud of ourselves for having ditched life on campus to 'go out into the real world'.
Flora had found this adorable apartment for us to share and in the three months we had lived there we had made it our own. The building was old and hardly up to code. We had to climb five floors to get home because the elevator was eternally broken, but the apartment was lovely and clean and we figured it was a steal for the price considering it was only a twenty-minutes walk from Yale and had three bedrooms —albeit super-tiny ones.
It was Halloween and we had gone to this costume party held on the rooftop of our building that night.
Of course, Flora wanted to go dressed up as a mix of the two Disney fairies she shared a name with, and Belle was game to dress up in a gold, flowing gown, but in the end, I won and we went respectively as Xena, Wonder Woman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer —all plus-sized and proud.
I smile in fond recollection.
Flora and Belle caused quite a stir on that rooftop and both met cute boys there. I've always been super-shy and socially awkward so I did not.
Being the only unattached girl at a party sucks big freaking time and in the end, I got tired of Mr. Pointy's sole companionship and slinked back home early.
I went to sleep happy for my friends but feeling kind of lonely. All of my oomph and my 'curvy and damn proud' attitude fizzling out of me as I pouted at the ceiling.
