11. Alice
Alice
Rude. He called me rude, and deep down in my soul, I know I was. It wasn’t time for me to leave yet, but I couldn’t stay there one more minute.
After graduation, I never went back. They had asked any of us graduating if we would be willing to work the summer camps.
They’d even pay us, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it was because that was the last place Ryder spoke to me and we ended badly, or because this place always represented the dreams I had of us and our life together, and no one wants that thrown repeatedly in their face.
Everywhere on the campus is a memory, and now these memories aren’t happy ones. They hurt, and in more ways than most people think.
The thing is, Ryder wasn’t just my best friend.
He was my whole world. I loved him in a way that he was sewn into the very being of who I was.
No one understood this. Not that I had a core group of friends to try to explain this to.
My entire social calendar was filled with him, only him.
And when he left like he did, it broke me.
Cold air hits me as I blow into our apartment, slam the door, and head into the living room where I find Kelli doing a makeup tutorial for her social accounts. I cried on the car ride home, and I know she can see the evidence.
“Kelli, I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to continue all these media events where we’re around each other.” I flop down on the couch and stare at her, needing her to solve all the problems of the universe at this exact moment.
She eyes me sympathetically and then leans forward to turn off the large, round ring light in front of her on the coffee table. “What happened? Wait, aren’t you supposed to be at your high school right now?”
“I was, but it’s too hard.” I heel off my shoes and curl up into a ball.
She gets up from the floor and comes over to join me. I cover my face with my arm and take a deep breath in and then let it out.
That summer, after Ryder left, no one understood. It was, “You’re young, you’ll move on, there are other fish in the sea, he’s just a guy, and you’ll meet tons of guys in college,” but I didn’t want to meet any other guys. There were no other fish in the sea, only this one, and I wanted him.
Obviously, I’m not counting the baby years, but those seven years we were together were basically half my life.
I don’t really have any memories from before him.
Sure, there are family vacations, flashes of holidays with my cousins, and other girls I played with from school, but once Ryder entered the picture, those faded.
After all, do you really have a lot of memories from elementary school?
I don’t. And even from middle school, the ones that I do have are of him.
Us. And what Ryder did to me, the only way I know how to describe it is death.
It was like he died. One minute, we were jumping for joy, and in the next he was gone.
He blocked my number, packed his bags that afternoon, and left.
He just left. I didn’t see or hear from him ever again.
He left me. Just like someone does when they die.
I was inconsolable.
Heartbroken isn’t even a strong enough word.
And what made it worse was that while I was grieving the loss of him, I was also acutely aware that he chose to drop me, as if all along I was only a provisional friend . . . never really consequential enough to last into the next chapter of his life.
“Well, how many events do you have left?”
“That I know of, a photo session on opening day with the mascot, we have a studio news show appearance, the gala, the team picnic, and then whatever else they throw our way.”
She pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and covers me with it. “Sounds to me like you’re halfway done. You can do it. I know you can.”
Grief is a devastatingly miserable thing.
Grief can also have flare-ups at the most inopportune times, and it’s grief that profoundly consumed me with this loss.
The loss of my best friend, really my only friend, as I spent all of my time with him or thinking about him.
The loss of someone I was deeply in love with.
The loss of my dreams and, therefore, my future.
There was never one instant when he wasn’t going to be a part of it.
Were we going to different schools? Yes, but I didn’t see that as a problem or a deterrent.
It just was. But we were just us, and that wouldn’t change.
But in an instant, it did. And he did this on purpose.
It also didn’t take long for this grief to turn into a deep depression.
I didn’t know how to deal with these emotions.
They came on fast and cut deep, I didn’t know how to find my way out.
I drowned in sorrow, shock, anger, and utter despair.
I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate, and I withdrew from everything and everyone.
The loneliness enveloped me, and that pain was physical.
By the third week in June, almost a month had gone by, and instead of pulling through, I was sinking further in.
My parents were at a loss, as my emotional state had moved past their capabilities.
With fall cheerleading practice scheduled to start the first day of Summer Session B, and the weekend before they were to move me into the athletic dorm, they’d reached their limit and booked me with a psychiatrist who works with teens.
We met six times before I left. She prescribed me an antidepressant, and then once at school, I continued with her via virtual appointments.
This therapist saved my life.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t suicidal. I was lost I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
I was going nowhere and would have let it all slip by, except she dragged me out of the darkness.
She didn’t try to fix me. Instead, she helped me understand that this can be a normal reaction to a devastating breakup or a loss, and she helped me find a new version of me without Ryder.
“It’s just so hard. I see him and hear him, and I know it’s only been a handful of years, but he’s exactly the same. Exactly. Whereas I was stripped down, rebuilt, and am someone completely different. It’s like . . . me losing him shattered my whole world, but him losing me meant nothing.”
I clutch the blanket to my chest. All of these weeks, as each one has passed, my chest feels like more and more weight is sitting on it. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to feel free.
“Alice, there’s no way, and you don’t know this.
You weren’t friends for seven weeks. It was seven years.
From everything I’ve ever heard and seen, he spent every waking moment with you.
Of course he’s changed. How could he not be?
And regardless of what he allows you to see, he had to have gone through this too. Your relationship wasn’t one-sided.”
“Sure feels that way.” A single tear drips down one side of my face. I’ve cried so many tears over him. I was certain I’d never cry another one, yet here we are. And he didn’t even do anything.
Well, that’s not true.
He wrapped his arm around me in a way that made me feel like I was someone to him, and then he took it all away by scolding me as if he had any right.
“Trust me, it’s not.”
I shake my head in disappointment.
“You want to know how I know? Because I watched you both at the barbecue and at the football jamboree. He seemed off his game and uncomfortable, whereas you were spectacular. If anyone is sitting around and wondering, it is him. Other than having to work side by side with him, it may as well have been Ryder Who?”
Ryder Who. My brain could probably get on board with this, but my heart won’t.
But Kelli’s not wrong. There’s no way I would have been able to do this with him previously.
Maybe even as close as a year ago. One of the things I most remember the therapist telling me is, “It’s okay to grieve what we lost, while at the same time finding joy in what we’ve found.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. We can allow ourselves to feel both. ”
Is that what I’m feeling? Both. I’m still grieving him, even more so at the current predicament I’ve found myself in, but also joy, because I am loving living in Tampa with Kelli, what we’ve created with the Mighty Monarchs, and being a professional cheerleader.
Being back at the school with him today and watching him smile and laugh with his old coach—how could I not feel both?
While it’s been years, and I’m proud of how much I’ve moved on and grown, that place made me feel like it was yesterday.
I let out a deep sigh. “I feel like I’m sliding backward.”
“No, babe, what you’re feeling is growing pains. You’re growing in a way that your heart, mind, and body know it needs to coexist with him. You’re surviving in a world that is overlapping with his, and I think you’re doing amazing.”
Amazing.
I soak up her words and take a moment to stand outside of my body, to escape the emotions, and to see the whole situation. I am doing amazing.
Look at how far I’ve come.
Look at what I’m doing for the Mighty Monarchs.
“Thank you,” I whisper to her as she leans over and hugs me.
“Always.”
Closing my eyes, I ask her the question I’ve asked her a hundred times. “Why do you think he did it?”
“I don’t know, and we probably never will.”
I let out another deep sigh.
“Want to order some Chinese food?” she asks.
My eyes pop open with excitement.
“Chinese?” We usually only splurge once a month on delivery, and this time will make it two.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, grinning. “We can watch that new Netflix rom-com series too. It came out today.”
She knows just how to cheer me up.
Food and binge-watching television.