27 Hopefully You Find Yourself Someday
27
Hopefully You Find Yourself Someday
I went back home and cried. I cried as I’d never cried before. Until dawn. My soul shattered, my heart in pieces. I curled up in bed as if I were six years old again, had just lost my mother, and was hugging the pillow waiting for the sun to rise.
Eventually I fell asleep.
I woke up muddleheaded with swollen eyelids that were almost impossible to open. I struggled out of bed because I had to, because I needed to go to the bathroom. In the mirror over the sink, my face was pallid and tear-streaked, a white mask framed by red hair kinked from a night spent in hell. I looked at myself, but I saw someone else, a girl who had taken her mother’s life with her selfishness and her longing to live. A person who had broken her father’s heart, condemning him to loneliness, unhappiness, the greatest pain a person can experience. The pain of losing someone you love and knowing you can never have them back. I hated myself, and I wished I could disappear forever.
Tears clouded my eyes, burning them, and sobs wrenched the muscles in my chest. What a strange feeling despair is. It bowls you over like an earthquake, making you beg, shout, and curse the world, hoping it will stop.
My father’s words kept resounding in my mind. I needed to feel loved by him. I longed for it; I had ever since I was a girl. But he never would love me, and now I knew why. The truth. The hard reality I just had to accept and that caused me unspeakable pain.
My mother had died, and it was my fault.
Mine.
Mine alone.
I went back to my room, where I heard an irritating hum. My phone was vibrating in my purse, which was still on the bedroom floor where I’d left it the day before. I ignored it. I just wanted the time to pass quickly and leave this agony behind me. I didn’t want to go through this. Nothing could ease the pain. Nothing.
I lay back on my pillow, alone and lost, insecure, full of fears and doubts.
Once more letting someone else tell me what my life should be.
My phone woke me. I’d been sleeping on and off, now dreaming, now opening my eyes, in a kind of limbo. I looked around. It was dark except for a soft light coming through the curtain from the streetlamps. Night had fallen. Maybe I’d been in bed a day, maybe two.
I dragged myself up, grabbed my purse, and took out my phone. I wasn’t sure whether to unlock the screen. I was scared of the number of missed calls and messages I’d have.
Twenty calls.
Eighteen messages.
All of them from Trey.
Oh, Trey. I’m so sorry…
I lay back again and looked at the ceiling.
And thought and thought and thought.
About the same thing over and over.
Much longer than I should have.
It was my fault my father had become a sad, bitter man. He was right, I owed him. I owed him compensation, and I knew what it would cost: my dreams, my hopes, my longings…
Everything I had been.
Everything I was.
Everything.
Me: one simple word that defined something so complex.
And it wasn’t hard to make the decision. I should have done it long before.
I gave up. I was beaten. I had no right to take my place in the world because it never had been mine anyway. I’d occupied it unfairly, hurting other people and making them suffer. But at least I could make up for some of it, even if it would never be enough. Even if doing so meant writing myself into an unhappy ending.
My phone buzzed again. Another message.
This time I opened it. But I didn’t read it. I couldn’t.
I took a breath and held it as I typed, my heart aching with regret and guilt and most of all, cowardice—my strongest trait:
What we have can’t be. I’m sorry, but it’s best if we not see each other again. Goodbye.
I turned off my phone and threw it against the wall. I rubbed my chest, trying in vain to relieve the pressure. Then I dragged my tired body into the sheets to let my mind rest. At last I knew what I had to do. Wait to feel the pain. And soon it came. An aching all over. For Trey, for the void my mother’s sacrifice had left inside me, the desolate ground where nothing could now be built, where nothing would grow.
Because I myself was nothing.
***
Boom , boom , boom …
“Harper, are you there? If you’re there, open the fucking door. We have to talk. I promise you, you can forget about me leaving until you let me see you.”
I leaned my forehead on the door, feeling the walls close in like a pair of merciless hands. I wanted to see him, but I couldn’t.
“Fine,” he said. His voice had changed as he’d stayed out there waiting for a sign. First it was sweet, now it was hard and scared. “I’m calling Hoyt and Hayley. I don’t want to, because this is between us, but you’re not giving me another option.”
Hoyt and Hayley? Hayley was coming back that night, and Hoyt must have already been in Montreal. Neither of them knew about Trey and me or what had happened with my father. And they couldn’t find out, or things would get more complicated.
I had made my decision.
It wasn’t fair for me to push ahead, happy, thinking only of myself, as though nothing had changed when it obviously had. I slowly turned the lock and opened the door. Trey was sitting on the stairs. As soon as he saw me, he stood. He looked as terrible as I did. His hair was a mess, his eyes had deep bags under them, and I could tell he hadn’t slept. I stepped aside to let him in. He walked past me without looking at me and came to a stop in the middle of the living room, where he stood with his hands in his pockets.
I closed the door behind me. I’d been a fool to think I could get him out of my life with a mere text message. Trey wasn’t the type to give up easily. He needed to understand every single detail about how things worked and why.
We observed each other in silence. I had to leave him and try to make everything go back to how it was before. As if he’d never existed. As if he hadn’t come back into my life. It would hurt him, but I had to abandon him, hard as it was, especially knowing it would be forever.
I sat on the couch. He did the same, but far away from me. I felt relieved and shattered at the same time. I could feel the tension in the air. He was nervous. He took a deep breath and rubbed his face before speaking.
“What’s going on, Harper? What was that message about?”
I shook my head, looking for words that were lost.
He went on, “My grandfather says a brave person is scared of his enemy, but a coward is scared of his own fear.”
His grandfather had an answer for everything. I managed to look up and meet eyes with him. My hands were trembling. I felt sick, and the ticking of the clock was so loud I thought it would drive me mad.
“I can’t keep going with you, Trey. I need this to end.”
He paled before my eyes and looked up at the ceiling.
“Why?”
“Things have changed.”
“In two days?”
“Yes.”
The tears on my cheeks felt like drops of acid.
“Why?” he asked, his voice cracking. “And don’t answer with some stupid phrase everyone uses, like ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ No bullshit. Tell me the truth.”
I nodded, fighting to keep my emotions under control—the very things I’d never managed to keep my grip on.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I know why my father never loved me. It was my fault my mother died. They found out she was sick as soon as she got pregnant with me. Everyone told her to abort so she could get the treatment she needed, but she refused. She decided to have me, and that’s why she died. My father can’t forgive me and I need him to. I realize it might never happen. But if I try to be the person he wants me to be, maybe time will bring us a little bit closer. Do you understand?”
Trey sighed, struggling to get out from under the weight that was crushing him, and I felt even worse about myself, about him, about everything.
“No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand what the hell that has to do with us.” He got up off the sofa and started pacing back and forth. “I’m sorry you had to find that out. It’s tragic. If I try to put myself in your shoes, I can’t begin to imagine what you’re feeling. Your…your mother sacrificed herself for you, she took that decision because, evidently, you mattered more to her than anything. And then your father goes and blames you for her death. You should be grateful to your mother, and instead you think you owe him something? How do you expect me to understand that?”
He brought his hands to his head.
“Trey, it was my fault. She chose me. And because of me, Hoyt and Hayley grew up without a mother. Because of me, my father lost his wife…”
“Your fault? Harper, stop carrying the weight of the world for a minute and think about what you’re saying. You didn’t do anything. And even if you think you did, what does that have to do with us?”
“If I stay with you, I can never be the person my father wants me to be.”
“Are you listening to yourself? What about the person you are? The person you really are?”
“There’s no such thing as the person I really am. I’ve never really been anything.”
He sighed.
“That’s not true. You’re real. You’re someone who dreams of working in her grandmother’s bookstore and turning it into somewhere magical. The girl who wants to write books and make the world live through her stories. The girl who sees a future with me at her side. You can’t close your eyes to all that, Harper.”
“I have to, though. If I want my father to accept me, I have to make a break with everything.”
He shook his head. I could see he didn’t like where the conversation was going.
“How the hell do you think you’re going to get him to accept you?”
“I’ll work for his company, I’ll go back home, and I’ll live there. I’ll try to be more like Hayley…”
He looked at me as if he didn’t know me, and I could see it took superhuman strength for him to try to remain calm and patient.
“Fine. You’re making the worst mistake of your life, but fine. What about me, though? Why can’t we stay together?”
I was exhausted. Every ounce of my strength was gone. And each question he asked me pulled us further and further apart, and I was dying inside.
“Because you would be a constant reminder of everything that could have been, and I can’t take that. Every time I see you, I’ll think of how it’s felt being with you, and it will be torture, knowing I’ll never feel that way again. I need to start from zero, Trey. I need you to forget these weeks. Forget everything that’s happened between us. Just go back to that Halloween four years ago when we saw each other on the stairs. Let that be your last memory of me. I can’t go on seeing you.”
He shook his head, unable to accept what I was saying.
“You think one thing, and you say another. You believe one thing, and then you act differently. You’re a pure contradiction. Chaos. You swore to yourself you’d never make a decision based on others’ expectations again, that you’d follow your own dreams and wishes. And now, look at you: you’re giving your life up for someone else.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t…understand me.”
He raised his arms and let them fall to his sides, powerless.
“I’m trying. I swear to you, I’m trying, but you’re like an unsolvable riddle. I keep getting more and more clues, but none of them lead anywhere, and I’m afraid they never will.”
“Well, if you can’t understand me, Trey, at least trust me. This is for the best. It’s over. It’s over, dammit!”
He stepped over and took my hands.
“Harper, babe, you have a problem. It’s that you’re constantly feeling, and it’s so intense that you’re unable to stop suffering in this illogical way that’s eating you alive. You’re being carried away by feelings you can’t control: guilt, desperation, anguish… You can’t make important decisions in the middle of that whirlwind. You’re setting yourself up for disaster.”
The anguish on his face was so intense that it was as if he was bearing all the pain for both of us. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them. He tried to hug me, and I turned away. If I let him, I wouldn’t be able to stick to my decision. When I looked back at him, his eyes were two deep wells of sorrow.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
“Trey…”
“Do you love me?”
“That’s not it.”
“Just answer the fucking question!” he shouted. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” I responded, bitterly but honestly.
“It’s not true,” he whispered. “Until you accept yourself, until you stop feeling guilty for everything that’s happened around you, until you trust in the person you are and learn to love yourself, you can’t love someone else. So I’m sorry, Harper. You don’t love me.”
That poisoned arrow hit me straight in the heart.
“I do love you, but I don’t want to hurt you, and I know I will. Sooner or later, I will.”
“You’re already hurting me. Don’t you see? Do you think me being far away from you is somehow going to be good for me?”
“Trey, I can’t survive if I try to do this halfway. Torn between what I love and what I feel I have to do. I need to choose.”
“And let me guess: you’ve chosen.”
“Yes,” I moaned.
If my life was a book, the most dramatic chapter was being written right then.
“For someone who usually thinks about things so much that she’s paralyzed when she’s forced to do something, you sure are letting some ridiculous impulses carry you away.”
“Maybe you don’t believe me, but this has nothing to do with impulses.”
“If I leave now, this is it, Harper. We’re done forever. I can’t just leave and come back into your life every time you change your mind. I can’t.”
“I understand.”
Then there came a moment—he shook his head so slightly, if I hadn’t been looking close, I could have missed it—when I knew he had understood. He understood there was nothing he could do to save me, that I didn’t want to be saved. He rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I guess that’s all I can say.”
“I’m sorry, Trey.”
“Yeah, me too. You know something? No one is more lost than the person who doesn’t want to find themselves. I hope you do, Harper. Hopefully you’ll find yourself someday.”
I tried to resist the agony taking hold of me. I felt like a fish flopping desperately on the shore. I was scared, and I couldn’t keep going. Time froze for a moment, and then he turned around and walked toward the door.
Weakened without realizing it, victim to my own desperation, I said, “You’re going, just like that?”
He turned, and I saw a tear on his cheek.
“What would be the use in staying? Would something change if I begged you not to destroy what we have, to fight for what you truly love?”
I couldn’t get out even one word. The feelings were there, but I couldn’t articulate them. I was crushed.
“Goodbye, Harper,” he said. “And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about what happened between us. You can relax and act like we never met. When I go out that door, I’m going to do everything I can to transform back into that shallow son of a bitch I was that Halloween years ago.”
Something cracked inside me, in my chest, the way the ice of a frozen lake cracks under your feet just before you sink in. The door opened and closed, and he disappeared.
My despair turned to rage. I cried, punched the wall, was thankful to the physical pain for taking my mind off my feelings. I fell to the floor, weary, and remained there a long time, I don’t know for how long, until it stopped. Until the emptiness lifted me up and took me away.