40. Lydia #3
I throw on a T-shirt and shorts and walk outside, sitting up on one of the small brick walls by our dorms. It’s quiet out. The campus is empty, and it’s weirdly peaceful. I hate being alone, especially with my own thoughts, but this high makes it oddly comforting for the first time.
I don’t know why in this moment, but I start to have this overwhelming urge to take a dive into the past, some voice telling me that I’m strong enough to walk down memory lane tonight.
I give in to the feeling and take my phone out, re-downloading my old social media, a place where all my darkest memories live and are still plastered for everyone to see.
After a couple of attempts to remember my password, I’m able to log in, and I just sit there as I stare at the screen, waiting for the panic to start, for the anxiety to make me back out…
but it doesn’t come. I avoid clicking on any of the thousands of notifications I have.
I didn’t do this wanting to relive any of the hate from strangers; I did it out of curiosity for the one thing I’ve never been able to face—reading the last words he left for everyone else.
The ones I heard about but never let myself read.
I go to the search bar and type in his name, clicking on his profile and bracing myself. When I scroll down…It’s right there. I’m almost surprised it’s still up, that nobody found a way to take it down. I was almost hoping someone would have removed it, so I wouldn’t have access to it.
I stare at his profile picture at the top, his eyes staring back at me, the same ones that begged me to save him because he didn’t know how to save himself, and the same ones that made me believe love always had to come with pain.
I stare at my finger hovering over the screen, shaking, and unable to move.
I thought I could do this. I thought I could read his words one last time, knowing they’re all false, and then put the lingering memories in a box, sealing them away for good.
That this could be the thing I needed to do to let the pain go.
Accept what he did and move on…but I can’t.
I can’t make myself do it. Instead, I quickly scroll past it and into a new roller coaster of emotions as I look through his past posts and photos.
They all look like normal, happy moments captured in time.
Especially the ones with us together. But each one holds a darker story for me.
It’s like I can be transported back to an exact moment just by seeing a picture.
One of them is us at a school football game, the one where he thought I was sitting too close to the guy next to me in the stands and slapped me across the face in the car on the way home when I tried to defend myself.
One of us in the hallway at school, where he was hugging me after we had just made up from a fight the night before.
One of us sitting on the bed in his dorm room the day he moved into college, the same bed I watched him screw my friend in after he beat me so badly just for asking what his problem was because he looked upset that day and wouldn’t tell me why, that turned it into an argument, which turned into rage, which turned into my jaw feeling like it was broken and my heart shattered for the millionth time.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until tears start to fall onto the screen, blurring the images.
I don’t know why I thought I could do this, why I thought it would be a good idea to poke at wounds that will never close.
I exit the app, swallowing back the lump in my throat and the pain in my chest. His face still lingers in my mind, his last words to me, how much hate he had for me.
He killed me that day in his car too, right alongside himself.
The girl I was will never exist again, and I hate him for what he created.
I hate this version of me more than the broken one I was before I met him.
I wish I knew how to fix this. How to stop chasing fake pleasure to replace the pain. How to be okay.
People do it, right? People can heal from these kinds of things? Can go back to being happy? Is it even possible?
I want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to know I won’t always feel like this. Because if I do? If I have to live every day of my life feeling this way? I’d rather not be here at all.
When the exhaustion finally creeps in, I look up to see a sliver of morning light peeking through the sky. I look at the time on my phone and realize that I have to be back up and at the library before class in less than three hours.
Crap. This is going to suck.
I hurry back to our dorm, slipping into my bed as the girls are still asleep. I quickly set an alarm and try to just get a quick nap in at this point. Something so I don’t fall over in exhaustion during the rest of the day.
* * *
I feel like I just closed my eyes when my alarm goes off, and I groan in pain as I roll over to turn it off.
I’ve never felt this type of hangover before.
It feels bone-deep, and I feel emotionally drained.
I don’t think I can do anything but lie in this bed today, but I’m really not in a good enough place with my grades to be able to miss a day, even though I’m not sure if I can physically get out of bed feeling like this.
Lani walks over, hovering above me. “How are you feeling?” she asks quietly.
I peek over and see Simone is still sleeping. I go to respond, but I have to stop, swallowing hard from how dry my mouth feels. Lani hands me a water bottle, and I gladly take it, drinking it and feeling some relief.
“Pretty shitty.”
“Yeah. I figured you would,” she tells me, reaching out a hand for me to take. “Come on. Get up, and I’ll make you a smoothie.”
I groan again, pulling my pillow from behind my head and putting it on top of my face to shield myself from her. “No…I just want to stay in bed and try to forget last night ever happened.”
“Not happening, Lyd. You made the adult decisions to do what you did last night. You gotta deal with the adult repercussions today. You don’t get to ignore your responsibilities just because you wanted to party too hard.”
She pulls me out of bed, and I reluctantly let her, even as I protest. I hate when she’s the logical one. I like it better when she’s too carefree to worry about anyone else’s problems. You know, it can be a real pain in the ass when other people care more about you than you care about yourself.
“Go shower and get dressed. I’ll make you that smoothie, and we can all walk across campus together.”