Track 18 I’ve Had Enough #3
For once, I didn’t try to escape it. I didn’t try to hide.
I let it wash over me in soul-crushing waves as I sobbed and cried there on the kitchen floor.
I wailed for my pain, my treachery, and my deceit.
I spent hours there, lying on the floor, in my broken mess of a life.
The mess I alone had made. I swam in grief until I could no longer breathe, no longer move, until the earth beneath me would stop.
And when it never did—when it was finally time to lift myself up, I grabbed E’s gift and braced myself for more.
I slipped off the twine and peeled back the brown paper carefully, as if one wrong move would detonate the bomb before its time. I held the CD case in my hands and endured the next wave of agony I so deeply deserved.
Taped to the inside cover of the CD case was a Polaroid picture of us. Kat had taken it during her random photography phase one summer. I never knew what happened to it, and my heart squeezed at the sight of it.
We were seventeen. Young and free and smiling widely in the front seat of E’s Cadillac Eldorado. She had run past and snapped it just as we were driving off. Our teeth were gritted, our noses scrunched, our eyes barely open.
I remember that day—it was the summer he got his car.
The sun was blazing, but the air had lost its humidity for the day, relieving us of its stickiness.
Wispy white clouds skated across the bright blue sky as if they were painted in place.
E put the top of his convertible down, letting the wind blow our hair in every direction as we drove through the winding roads of the Pine Barrens, listening to music and singing out loud.
His crooked grin and soft brown eyes full of warmth and light kept finding mine.
My chest would swell, and my belly would flutter with each tickling glance.
My broken heart nearly smiled at the memory—at the boy who always saw me.
At the girl I used to be. At the love that was there, even in a photograph.
I opened the case to a silver disc, with only two words written on it in perfect handwriting:
To You—
My throat clenched tightly, and my heart sank as I walked to the old-school stereo and inserted the disc.
It spun and spun, until finally the keys of the piano filled the room around me. And then—
“Of all the loves I’d had in my life, I’d rather have you. Whatever they were, no matter how nice, they can’t compare… Cause I know that I’ll love you forever, you’re mine…”
There it was. Every word we didn’t say. Every song we hid behind. Track after track, lyric after lyric, it was all there. The soundtrack to my heart.
I listened to the CD in one sitting. I didn’t move. I didn’t think. I just sat there and let it all pour over me like the fountain of heartache it was.
And when it ended, I lay there in silence, exhausted, like the weight my heart had been dragging for years had finally caught up to me.
The music was gone, but its echo lingered in my bones like an aching, gnawing torment I couldn’t escape—and in that stillness, I succumbed to it.
I made no excuses.
I made no attempt to escape.
I lied to Jake. I lied to E. I lied to myself.
After all the years of back and forth, I was done. Spent. Exasperated. I’d exhausted every avenue, and nothing had set my heart free. Nothing gave me peace.
Being with Jake brought me pain for what it did to E.
Being with E brought me pain for my disloyalty to Jake.
It all brought me turmoil, for where my love was too much, and where it’d never be enough.
And now, no matter what I did, no matter who I chose, someone would be heartbroken—more than they already were, and that felt the most unfair.
My heart didn’t want to deal with any of it. My head told me to run away. But my soul was tired of lying, tired of hiding. It told me it was time to end the madness I had single-handedly created.
I prayed a heartfelt prayer that night, out of nothing but pure weakness—pure surrender. I begged God to tell me what to do. To guide me out of the mess I had made of everything—of love, of loyalty, of myself.
Tears soaked the floor as I whispered every regret, every selfish choice, every battered bruise I’d left on hearts that didn’t deserve it—and begged for forgiveness.
I’d love to tell you some whimsical story of a grand, audible voice that came, a light that shone from the heavens and beamed down on me—but it didn’t.
There was nothing. There was seemingly no one. In the emptiness that followed my desperate plea, there was no voice, no sign—only the hollow echo of everything I’d lost at my own hand.
But somehow, in that silence, I knew.
The answer wasn’t in choosing one or the other.
It was in choosing me. It was choosing to be the person I was made to be.
The girl I used to be before love had ruined me, and made me a liar.
The girl I used to be before love made me selfish and cruel.
The girl I was before my moral compass was completely destroyed.
The girl I hoped to become again—if grace would still have her.
And He would.
I woke up the next morning with a confidence I couldn’t explain and a peace that had no business being mine. But I ran with it.
Over the next two days, I made my arrangements, packed a bag, and got on the flight out.
After all the years, after all the torture, I’d finally had enough.
And for the first time in my life, I knew exactly what to do about it.