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ONE
Isla
THE HEARTBREAK
This isn’t a love story.
I want to make that clear from the start.
If you’re looking for white picket fences and heart eyes,
bluebirds singing and sunny skies,
or that Hallmark movie feeling you get when the credits roll,
this story is not for you at all.
Because life is not always like a Hallmark movie.
Sometimes it’s more jagged edges than white picket fences.
Sometimes it’s more circling black vultures and storm cloud painted skies.
Sometimes it’s less about the cards you were dealt and more what you do with those cards.
I’ll tell you my story—
just as long as you don’t expect too much.
TWO
Isla
Lana Del Rey hums softly from the record player. The pop, click, and gentle crackle of the vinyl spinning against the turntable soothes my soul as the slow melody warms my veins, rivaling the feeling of the Bombay Sapphire Gin I drink when the occasion calls. I close my eyes and beg my soul to get lost for a little while, needing to perfect the art of escapism, if only for a minute or two. I’ll take what I can get.
But when I open my eyes seconds later I’m still in this world and not lost at all.
At least not physically.
Physically I’m right fucking here and I wish I could be anywhere else.
I suppose if this were a love story, I’d tell you how he swept me off my feet. How Manuel Rodriguez made me come alive again after years of being afraid of my own shadow.
Being abducted will do that to you, you know.
When I was fourteen years old, my friend Cynthia and I were walking home from school when a man abducted us. I made it out and she didn’t and I’ve gone to therapy every week since. I’m twenty-one now, so you can do the math. That’s a lot of therapy sessions.
Though, the best therapy of them all didn’t come in the form of sitting on a couch, spilling my soul to a woman with black-rimmed glasses.
It came in the form of Manuel Rodriguez.
Talk about sunny skies and bluebirds singing and Hallmark movie storylines. Notice how I didn’t say Hallmark movie endings, but storylines. Boy meets girl, girl falls head over heels in love with boy, boy does something stupid and messes it all up.
That seems like a good place to start if you want to know what made me into the woman I am today.
Let’s start with when Manuel messed it all up.
* * *
