Both Charlie and Rene had the same words of wisdom to offer.
It will get better.
This feeling will fade away.
I suppose they would know. Well, maybe not Rene. She was the one who had left, after all, and was now happily married to a youngish pseudo-famous athlete. But Charlie was still alone after all these years. If he said this horrible emptiness in my chest would eventually heal, I should believe him.
I don't.
Not just because the pain is so deep, radiating down into my hands that I wonder if I've developed some sort of auto-immune disease and my limbs are dying off. Not because just crawling out of bed to go to the bathroom leaves me breathless, the weight pressing in on my hollow chest causing me to pant with the effort. I've considered just not drinking the glass of water Charlie replaces on the bedside table every few hours so I wouldn't need to visit the bathroom, but suicide by dehydration is beyond what little will power I have left.
I imagine how my father must have felt after Rene ran off with me with hardly a word. I'd never really thought about it before, but now as I find myself in my own similar hell of abandonment, I try to conjure up an image of him glued to his bed, incapacitated by the loss of his daughter and wife, but I can't. I can't imagine he ever felt this awful. He had work. He had friends like Billy Black and Harry Clearwater. He had people who needed him.
What do I have?
My briefly formed friendships seem shallow. I should have spent more time working on those, but I didn't. I spent all my free time with him. Even the idea of him makes the ache in my hands throb and I clench them tight until the pain dissipates. I put all my time and effort into my relationship with him – Edward, I make myself think his name – because it was supposed to be forever. He was going to change me and we'd be together until the world ends. Why it never occurred to me that he'd change his mind, I don't know. Looking back now, it should have. Maybe I was blinded by the love the rest of his family seemed to have for me. How happy they were that Edward had finally found his own love. I had taken my place in their family as a given and was only waiting for Edward to catch up. Change me, move me away to some place no one would ever recognize us, maybe start marrying every decade or so like the other couples do.
All this is gone now. My entire future, my love, my soul mate, my every other cliché one could come up with, is gone. Left on the forest floor where his words cut me down.
"I don't want you."