Chapter 10 Scream to the Void
Before Arlo, there was only Brian. We had what looked like love, the kind people envy from the outside.
We shared a home, built routines, took photos that looked happy.
I thought we were steady, safe, meant. I remembered him telling me, over and over, that he had loved his best friend once, but she never felt the same and that he was finally over her.
I wanted to believe him. I clung to those words like a lifeline.
But it was all a lie. Every promise, every reassurance, had been a mask for the truth he never wanted me to see.
He never stopped loving her. I didn't know it then, but she was always there like a ghost haunting our life together.
Every time he said he had to travel for work, he was going to her town.
Every time she called, he went. No hesitation.
I had no idea. I was at home thinking he was exhausted from meetings, planning dinners, washing his clothes, feeling grateful for the life we were building, while he was in her bed, revisiting the past I thought we'd left behind.
When the truth finally came out, he didn't cry or beg. He just said it flatly, almost kindly that he had never stopped loving her. Like it was some tragic inevitability I should understand. As if I had just been keeping his place warm until she decided she wanted him back.
In that moment, everything collapsed. Not just the relationship, but the illusion of it—the comfort, the laughter, the sense of belonging. I realized he'd never really been with me. I was just the pause between chapters, the quiet intermission before his real story resumed.
That heartbreak burned through me, but it also lit a fierce determination to get away.
Not just from him, but from everything that made me small.
From the way I'd let myself fade into the background, too afraid to demand to be seen.
I wanted out of that pattern, out of the quiet spaces where I had accepted being "almost enough. "
Of course, I now see how life was laughing at me when i made that promise.
Because there's also my family. I have a sister, though calling her that feels strange because she never really felt like one to me.
She wasn't cruel, she didn't need to be, but she was always the golden child: beautiful, academically successful, socially radiant, everyone's favorite.
I was the quiet artist, the one people barely noticed, the background figure in the family portrait.
Not unloved, not mistreated but invisible nonetheless.
While she sparkled and thrived, I existed on the edges, quietly watching, quietly yearning for notice, for significance.
It wasn't that my parents didn't love me—they did, in their quiet, distracted way but their words always seemed to orbit around her.
She's so talented. So brave. So full of life.
Somewhere between all those compliments not meant for me, I learned to take up less space.
To be the one who listened instead of spoke.