4. Natalie
Natalie
Ifight to catch my next breath. Tears stream down my cheeks, and I focus so intently on trying to breathe—something you shouldn’t have to think about at all—that I don’t even worry that anyone might see me crying in my car.
My shoulders sink in on themselves, and I gasp as a hundred pounds crush down on my chest.
My lips tingle and my hands are going numb, a sign this panic attack is the worst kind I deal with.
I can’t breathe, I can’t see through the tears, and now parts of my body feel like they’ve disappeared.
I feel trapped in the small space between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat.
I’m locked in this big metal contraption that’s as dangerous to the driver as it is to the cars it could crush outside.
I’m in a metal tank and I can’t get out.
I’m stuck underwater where oxygen doesn’t exist.
Luke.
I want Luke. He’s always been here to hold me through my attacks. He’s always helped me to breathe again. He always pulls me from the water.
Just breathe, I tell myself. It’s what he would say. Just breathe and it will go away.
But my brain continues to command the opposite. It wants to fight and scream and cry some more. I clutch at my chest, focusing on the lengths of my breath and the things I can feel and see to help ground me as I mentally fight the attack.
I count my breaths, each four seconds long. In—one… Two… Three… Four. And out—one… two… three… four. My eyes land on the gas station door, and I make my brain focus on five things I notice to help me calm down.
The stucco on the wall near the large front window has a crack running down it. A woman opens the door for another woman with a young child. I squeeze my eyes shut and turn away from the observation.
I see the steering wheel, the radio dial, and my cup of matcha beside me.
“I can’t—I don’t want—to be here,” I cry to myself through my sobs.
Everything in my life is upside down, and it’s all my fault.
I don’t know where I belong, and I haven’t known for a long time.
Leaving home at eighteen wasn’t in anyone’s best interest but mine—and I know I should have done it differently.
My head was in the clouds when I met Luke, and I knew leaving would hurt my parents.
But I didn’t want to lose him. I chose him over my family.
I know I have a place with him now, that he loves me and wants me, but when I met him I felt like I could easily be forgotten.
Like if I didn’t leave with him when his family’s vacation ended, it would be the end of us too.
He would have gone back to Florida, to his life at the country club and his dreams of joining his dad’s business, where he’d forget that I existed.
I wouldn’t take that chance. So I chased him like a lovesick puppy, and now—
And now?
Now I let him go, and he didn’t chase me.
My breathing is still ragged, and the attack isn’t close to finished yet. When I can finally take a full breath, I gulp down air like it’s the first time I’ve ever tasted something so good. I switch my focus to three things—no, four things—I can feel, trying to ground myself.
What can I feel?
I feel the leather seat under me, my bare legs sticking slightly to the warm material.
I feel the wind from the AC on my face. It brushes my hair and tickles my neck, and I clock it like my life depends on it.
I wiggle my toes in my shoes, feeling the pressure of the floor beneath my white sneakers.
The weight on my chest is ebbing away an ounce at a time, and I take a deep shaky breath that clears my mind. I roll my lips, feeling them once again as the tingly sensation slowly vanishes. My hands, too, are coming back to life.
With relief, I lay my head against the headrest and close my eyes, relaxing my shoulders as I’m released from the cage that trapped me underwater.
Oxygen is a blessed thing.
I continue the calming methods my therapist from years ago taught me.
I identify three things I can hear—the hum of the AC, people talking outside, my own breaths—and then two things I can smell—gas from the pumps and the coconut air freshener dangling from my rearview mirror.
After twenty minutes of slowly breathing the beautiful oxygen God created and meditating on the circumstances I’ve effortlessly put myself in, I pick up my phone again and navigate the GPS to Maple Lake, Pennsylvania.
With my tongue I swipe a tear from my lip—the last thing I catalog as the one thing I can taste.
The panic has passed, and my thoughts are clearer. The fight-or-flight mode I experienced dissolves, and I no longer feel frantic. I’m able to focus on the task at hand as I search for a place to stay tonight, still sniffling through my nose.
There’s a nice-looking beachfront hotel in Savannah, Georgia, only two more hours from here, so I add that as a stop in the app.
I’ll book a room for the night when I get there, and I’ll definitely be using Luke’s card—the one we’ve accumulated points on with all our travels.
They’re as much mine as his, and it’s the least he can do for me.
And I doubt he’ll notice anyway, too busy with work to check the transactions on one of his many cards.
It isn’t fair that he’s put me through years of waiting, knowing what I’ve wanted all along and never giving it so much as a blink.
Each time, he pretends to think about his answer before telling me he doesn’t want kids, but I know he isn’t really weighing the option at all.
The answer is ingrained in him, carved into his hands and his heart and his tongue.
Why does he always put on an act when the topic comes up?
When I mention children at all, Luke builds a stage—a place to perform what he seems to have rehearsed.
Either he really does think about giving me another answer, or he only pauses for show, like he knows I’ll be placated if he just takes a few extra seconds to answer.
Has he always done this, or have I just always been so optimistic that I hadn’t noticed he was stalling?
I grip the steering wheel with white knuckles. I hate that he’s done this. That he’s made my life so bright and fluffy in his attempt to make me forget what I want. I’ve bitten into the pie to find it was made of mud. And only now, after seven years, am I finally spitting it out.
The hurt and disappointment I’ve felt morph into something that feels more like resentment.
I shouldn’t have had to make this choice, but he didn’t stop me from leaving when he could have.
He let me go far too easily, and that hurts.
I hate that he won’t give me the one thing I so desperately want, but after everything else we’ve faced together, he just let me leave.
Why would he do that? Why didn’t he ask me to stay?
I check my phone, wondering why he hasn’t even tried to call.
This is the moment I realize how frustratingly angry I am.
I don’t want him to know where I am or where I’m going.
He missed his chance to ask me to stay. With a few angry clicks on the screen, I press the red button that gives me the option to stop sharing my location.
With shaking hands, I contemplate blocking his number altogether, but I can’t seem to send the signal from my brain to my fingers.
Do I really want to cut him off completely?
No, not yet. It hurts too much to feel so completely alone. At least if he calls—whether I answer or not—I’ll know that he tried.
I take another large gulp of matcha—something I probably shouldn’t be indulging in right after having a massive panic attack—and back out of the parking space, wiping tears from my eyes, finally leaving the darkening gas station behind me.
“Hi, I need a room for tonight. Any size bed is fine.” I hand my card to the man at the counter, resting my large rolling suitcase by my feet.
“Yes, ma’am.” The man takes my card for payment. “We have a queen bed on this floor or a king bed on the second floor.” He looks up at me with a kind smile. “Do you have a preference?”
I roll my lips in as I think. Luke would pick the second floor king bed because it would put the most distance between us and the noise of the ocean-themed bar.
I look back at the bar, and the sound of ice clinking in glasses reaches my ears.
Even in my imagination, I feel the stress slipping from my fingers with the taste of something strong.
Maybe I won’t drink tonight; I’ll most likely go straight to bed.
But I’d be lying if I said the temptation didn’t burn through me like salt on an open wound.
A drink would be nice. If Luke were here, he’d say no to the room by the bar in a heartbeat, preferring the privacy and quiet of another floor.
I purse my lips. “I’ll take the queen on this floor,” I reply, tired of hearing Luke’s negative responses in my head.
I can make this decision on my own. The man nods, handing me a paper and a pen.
I sign it, and he produces my room key and a small slip of paper.
The password for the hotel Wi-Fi is scribbled on it, as well as the number 105.
“Thanks.” I smile, but it feels pointless.
“My pleasure. Don’t hesitate to call the front desk if you find you need anything else to make your stay more comfortable.”
With a nod, I walk through the beach-style lobby, past the well-stocked bar—already teeming with men and women dressed in stylish beachwear and flip-flops—and down the hall to room 105. Inside, the room is cold from the running AC, and the lights are dimmed.
I flip on all the lights as I roll what is apparently now my whole life into the bright room.
The bed is covered in a light blue duvet with sunshine-yellow throw pillows.
It’s disgustingly … happy, and I waste no time in tossing the pillows on the opposite side of the small couch where I can’t see them.
I’d usually love a reason to add a pop of color to anything, but today I want to wallow in the shadowy parts.
With a new wave of anxiety crashing over me, I face the large mirror hanging on the back of the sliding closet door.
My pink T-shirt no longer sits neatly tucked into my athletic skirt, and I feel sweaty and gross from sitting in the car for hours where my legs stuck to the leather seats.
A shower would definitely help to wash away the grime—and maybe the emotional sandstorm I’m in, if I’m lucky. But I’m reaching here.
I bite my lip as I try to define the warring feelings inside of me for the one hundredth time.
I love Luke, but he won’t ever give me a baby. And that makes me sad, hopeless in a way I haven’t felt since meeting him.
I don’t want to live without him, but I will if it means I can fill the hole in my heart.
Since he won’t agree to being a father, then I can’t make him be one.
But I will become a mother if it’s the last thing I do.
I don’t know how yet, but I’ll figure it out.
This thought fills me with determination and rage, a strong cocktail for a woman out on her own.
I don’t know how my family will react to my return, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Nerves settle in, taking up residence like an unwelcome roommate.
A heavy, tired breath passes through my lips. I’m a terrible gambler—just look at how everything has turned out with Luke, the man whose stance on children I thought I could change.
After a long shower, I feel much better.
I no longer have frizzy hair from the Florida humidity or mascara stains down my cheeks.
Now that I think of it, I looked like an absolute disaster when I came in here.
No wonder the man at the front desk seemed extra cautious.
He probably thought I’d fall apart at any moment.
It’s not late yet, but I climb under the covers and go right to bed, the stress of the day pulling me into a fitful darkness.