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Chapter 3 – Loss
Ruby
At first, rage and fear ran rampant. Neither Yiayia, nor Amber, could talk to me without setting me off. There were nights I lay in bed squeezing my hands in fists because I wanted to slap myself so badly.
I cried myself to sleep.
I lost weight.
I finally got an appointment for a psychological assessment and the doctor diagnosed me with agoraphobia and ADHD. All those months waiting, all those hours of assessments, and the work was only beginning.
My homework consisted of compiling a list of everything I would do if anxiety wasn’t an obstacle, and then prioritizing each item according to its level of difficulty. Going to the mall made the list. That rated a three on a scale of one to ten. Going on vacation clocked in at ten only because that was the highest rating possible. B.C. did not make it onto the list.
Vander had moved on.
I stopped following Vander on social media almost immediately after our last phone call, but there were times I searched him, just to see his face. The day I saw a post of him with another girl, my heart skittered in my chest, then dropped to my stomach, leaving me with that sick feeling you get from the sudden drop of the rollercoaster, minus the thrill. I slammed my monitor off and stood, knocking over my chair in my haste to get away from the computer.
I spun away on my heel, my eyes wide, my mouth gaping with shock. “No, no, no, no, no,” I moaned. I grasped my head between my palms and squeezed as I stared unseeing into space. Closing my eyes only made it worse.
The keening sounds coming from my throat scared me. The more I tried to suppress them, the louder they got, until my cries erupted harshly from my throat and my tears broke free in harsh, angry wails.
Nothing in my life prepared me for the loss and betrayal of seeing that picture: not the moment I’d lost my father, not my mother’s abandonment, not witnessing Amber’s grief as she ran down the driveway after her. Even the loss of my pappou could not compare to the wave of anguish that sucked me under when I saw the evidence of what I’d done.
Every great loss up until that moment in my life seemed to have served one purpose: to exponentially increase the pain of the subsequent loss. By the time I lost Vander, the pain was unfathomable.
I stuffed my feelings down into a tiny box at the pit of my stomach and shut down all my social media. I didn’t want to see him happy with another. I didn’t want to see him married. I didn’t want to see him become a father, not without me.
I vowed not to look for him anymore after that. I cut myself off from everyone I knew from university, isolating myself to insulate myself from the pain.
The next day I mailed him back his cross, then I went to bed in his sweatshirt and stayed there for five days. All the anger I had thus far aimed at myself for fucking up my future morphed into grief. The fury that had been my daily companion gave way to anguish at what I had allowed to slip through my fingers. Grief trapped me in a bleak well of mourning from which I did not wish to be freed.
On the fifth day, Amber bravely slipped into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed. She stroked my hair back from my face, and I heard her sniff, when yet another tear escaped my closed lids.
She kicked off her shoes, climbed over me, and nestled in to spoon against my back. I cried as she rocked me, her arm banded tightly across my chest, her own tears soaking the hair behind my ear.
When I finally calmed, she dangled an envelope from her finger and thumb in front of my face.
“I opened it, Ruby.” She murmured. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I worried it might make things worse for you, and I was afraid to give it to you.”
I recognized Vander’s handwriting. I sat up and wiped my palms roughly across my face and dried them on my pajama pants. Amber swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat hip-to-hip beside me. I opened the envelope and pulled out Vander’s cross and his note. Amber spoke softly beside me.
“It’s not over, Ruby. Not by a long shot.”
I nodded. I slipped his cross back over my head and tucked it under my shirt. I lay my hand over it and pulled in a shuddering breath.
“Okay.” I nodded again.
“Okay?” she asked. “You going to keep fighting? Get better? Even if you and Vander are never to be, he has sent you a big piece of himself. He loves you. He always will.”
“Me, too,” I replied, my lips trembling.
She patted my knee. “Ela, koritzi mou,” she coaxed softly. “Get up before Yiayia calls the priest to come. Do we do exorcisms?”
I snorted, but I felt bad, too. “I’m sorry I worried her.”
“I hope you’re hungry,” she joked, bumping me with her shoulder. “She’s been cooking up a storm.”
I laughed, the sound wet and garbled, and bumped her lightly back.
