Chapter One #3
I hated getting off my routine.
I hated how much it bothered me.
Yet I’d trained myself to follow this routine for my own well-being, for my own survival.
I planned every step of my day, allotted time for my hobbies and social activities.
The only place I gave up control was at work, and I struggled with that, even after giving myself an hour of grace in case things ran over.
And things had run over tonight by an hour and five minutes.
For three of those five minutes, as I was scrambling to finish my closing tasks, my skin was itching and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention.
When I’d gotten home, my pulse was skittering and I felt lightheaded.
This added more wasted time because I had to check my blood sugar, and by the time I made it inside, I was nearly half an hour behind on starting my ritual.
Over time, I realized I was drawn to the term ritual over routine.
Everyone has routines, but it was the tasks within the routine that I chose to romanticize more.
My evening ritual started off by me humming my favorite song as I hung my purse on the hook by the door.
Then I took off my shoes and other outerwear, strategically hanging my coat on one side of the coat rack and my scarf on the other.
My shoes were placed in the small shoe cabinet I’d purchased after buying this place.
My keys were never to be put in my purse unless I was at work or the shopping center.
Other than that, they were supposed to be in my hand, in the ignition, or in the pretty green glass bowl on my entryway table. This was so they wouldn’t get lost.
Then I would light all twelve of the white candles perched on my hearth.
And with each candle I lit, I would name something I was grateful for.
Some nights, I would recite the same twelve things.
Other times, if I had the mental capacity, I would challenge myself to find different things to be grateful for.
I didn’t want this part of my ritual to feel like a chore, so I didn’t push.
Most of the time, I said what was on my mind and heart, leaving it at that.
After I was done with that, I would take a scalding seven-minute shower.
Ten minutes if I needed to wash my hair.
Then came my five-step nightly skin care routine, then dinner, then thirty minutes of decompression in the living room while a movie played.
Once the kitchen was cleaned, the dishwasher running, the countertops disinfected, then…
then I could retreat to the sanctuary of my room for the night.
Sleep, of course, never came easy due to the nightmares.
But my routine helped. My daily, weekly, monthly routines, rituals dotted throughout each, helped me heal in ways I never thought possible.
Not finding sleep quicker than I needed was a monumental problem.
It was a problem because when the house was quiet, the candles all blown out, the day finished, the moonlight would flow through my windows.
I loved the moon. I loved her light. What I didn’t love was the way the moonlight stretched across the floor.
Because no matter what kind of flooring or where I was, that image would yank me back into the past. Back to the memory where my dark knight came to rescue me from the dreadful castle.
The more the memory resurfaced, the more I felt the shackles on my hands and wrists, the weight of them threatening to snap my then frail bones if I tugged too hard.
The smell of him, clean and fresh, would overwhelm my senses as my psyche fought to keep me in the present.
His gentle voice would sound in my ears.
“Everything is going to be okay now,” he’d whispered to me. “I’ve got you. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
And he’d kept that promise, staying out of my life when I coincidentally crashed into him. I don’t know how or why the world managed to bring me back to the man who gave me a second chance at life, but I couldn’t be around him.
He was never supposed to be in my present. He couldn’t be.
I’d categorized him as someone in my past and nothing more.
That hot summer day when my gaze collided with his at the bookstore, I’d gotten a funny feeling in my chest, but my mind shut it down quickly, commanding me to set a firm boundary.
So that’s exactly what I did. And any time I thought about the pain I might’ve caused him, the guilt was stronger than anything I’d ever known.
There were rare occasions, mainly on my off days, when I let my mind wonder, that I would conjure up an elaborate plan to track and hunt him down to thank him for saving my life.
In this plan, gifts were added to ease his pain…
like three pies or a pile of money. None of these ideas eased the guilt.
In fact, most of the time, they only added to it.
The last thing I or any of his friends expected was for him to disappear.