26. Lydia #2
“I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral,” I choke out, not realizing until now how badly that hurt me.
How maybe I needed to have that closure…
or maybe I didn’t, but I didn’t get to make that decision.
After everything he did to me, I didn’t get to say my piece.
“His family…they think I’m this evil person who killed their son. Not even they knew who he really was.”
“Lydia, none of this is your fault. You didn’t do this. You don’t deserve any of it, and I hate what they’re saying. You’ve been through more in seventeen years than most people ever go through in their entire lives. You’re the strongest person I know.”
We lay there silently as I feel it all pressing in on me, the reality that this is my life, something I can’t escape.
Eventually, Simone sits up, slowly releasing me. “You need to get up. Let me help you.”
I stare at her, helplessly. “Simone…I can’t.”
“You have to, Lydia. You know you can’t stay like this. You’re going to end up going too far into the dark, and I’m not letting that happen. You know I never will.”
She’s right. I can’t stay like this. But I can barely move without pain. My muscles burn, my back has been screaming, and my limbs feel like they don’t work. I let Simone pull me up gently, and I hiss sharply in pain.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, concerned.
“I haven’t…I haven’t used the bathroom in a couple of days. I feel kinda sick, and it really hurts.”
Simone’s eyes widen. “Lydia, I don’t think that’s okay. You might need to see a doctor.”
“No. No doctors,” I plead. “I don’t want to leave the house. I just need…I just need to shower.”
Simone hesitates, then reluctantly nods.
She helps me stand, and my legs tremble like they want to give out under me.
I hate how weak I’ve become. Simone guides me into the bathroom, patient and careful with me as she helps remove my clothes.
She stops suddenly when she lifts my shirt and sees the cuts along my lower stomach.
Shame quickly hits me and I want to jerk my shirt back down.
She doesn’t say anything, though, just continues to help me out of my shorts, and I feel her fingers stop and slowly trace the ones on my thighs as well.
I can’t stop the tears from starting to spill now.
I just watch them as they hit the back of her hand, and she looks up at me with this sadness and hurt in her eyes.
I know it’s for me, for how much she cares about me, for how much she wishes she could take away the pain.
Nobody can, though.
She stands up and gently turns on the shower, checking the temperature, then hands me a towel. “I’ll be right outside if you need me.”
I step into the shower, the water almost burning against my neglected skin, stinging every cut and wound, even the ones on the inside.
My mind feels slightly clearer for the first time in days as I stand there. Having Simone here, knowing she doesn’t hate me and she still cares, gives me the smallest amount of hope and is the only thing I can cling to since Eli’s death.
The only person who could pull me out of my self-destruction is here. Even after pushing her away so many times and having been such a shitty friend…she still cares, still showed up. She makes me want to get better. I don’t know how…but for the first time, I actually want to.
Standing under the water with my thoughts running wild, I realize I haven’t talked to Camilla since before Eli died.
I just haven’t had the strength, or the words, or even the desire to keep holding on to someone who is dead right now.
I feel like, if I talk to her…I might try to talk to him, and I’m not ready for that, so I’ve avoided them both.
I don’t last long standing there in the shower. I’m just too weak. I sink down on the floor of the shower, knees to my chest, letting the water wash away the grief…for more than just the people, but for the life I keep hoping I’ll get to have that is constantly ripped from under my feet.
I slide open the shower curtain, and Simone is standing there waiting; her eyes fill with concern as she looks down at me, but there’s no judgment. She just turns the water off and helps me stand up, drying me off and handing me fresh clothes.
I’m shaking as I sit down on the closed toilet, tears building up again. “Why are you here, Simone? I hurt you, too. I don’t deserve—”
She gently stops me, taking my hands in hers.
“I love you, Lydia. I know now that you pushed me away because he was hurting you, and because you were hurting yourself…but you’ve always been my best friend.
I lost sight of that in the pain of the things you said…
but seeing everything for what it was…I won’t ever do it again.
I know your heart, and I know you don’t hurt other people unless you’re hurting.
I know it wasn’t ever towards me, so I just want to move past it. ”
Her words break down whatever small barrier I had left up. The tears finally break, and she just holds me tight and lets me get it all out.
“You need help, Lydia,” she whispers softly. “We’re going to get you through this, but you have to want it.”
I pull back, looking into her eyes, searching for any hint of annoyance or resentment from her, but there is none.
“I don’t know how, Simone. How do I move past this? How can I ever heal from what he did? How can I deal with being so sad that he’s gone while also hating him for everything he did? For traumatizing me like that?”
She pulls me to her and presses my head into her chest. “One day at a time,” she says into my hair. “We take it one day at a time. And you’re not doing it alone…not as long as I’m around.”
The damage my parents caused since I was born, the painful hole in my heart Camilla left, the betrayal from Katie that altered my brain, the hateful words countless people have written all over me, and the scars Eli permanently gave me may never go away…
but they don’t have to define me. This all may be part of my story, a book I didn’t ask to be written, but one I get to choose the ending of.
Maybe I can come back from this. I have Simone; I have a family who wants me…
I have an unwritten future waiting for me.
Maybe it’s still possible.