Notes: This one-shot is a look into Esme's mind a few days before she was scheduled to be married to Charles Evenson. I thought this would be a difficult time for Esme because she was forced into a marriage before she got to really even discover herself - she misses that but she doesn't realize what's missing.
Writing does not come easy for me, so it may be hard to believe, but this one took me weeks to write, despite how short it is in the end. I really tried to put myself into Esme's shoes in this situation. Capturing emotions and characterizations just doesn't come as easy to me like it does for some people.
Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight! No copyright infringement intended.
Rain poured down the neatly constructed bricks of her home, relentlessly slamming against the thin glass pane of her bedroom. The girl cried silently, never making a sound or movement. The way she stayed frozen would have made you think she were naught but a china doll, the image of tears on her face merely mirroring the raindrops on the window.
However, it was all very real. It was sickening how fate had a way of twisting things around in a person's life sometimes.
The flow of her tears was steady, constant—almost as if it had been rehearsed for a play.
Whether you called her stupid for crying or weak for expressing her emotions in this fashion, it didn't change the way she felt. Even though she was happy, the girl couldn't help but occasionally feel hopeless. Despite the fact that she had a loving family and a wealthy fiancé, that didn't change anything.
She couldn't help but feel like a failure, as if she'd somehow made a mistake, carelessly putting aside all the lives she'd ever made a positive difference in. Sometimes, it didn't matter what people said or did for her; there were still days when she felt like nothing better than the scum under other people's shoes.
Even as she stared at the telephone she'd put down minutes before, she didn't say a word, instead settling on staring out the dark night as the rain streamed from the sky.
One could call the rain beautiful when the sun peeked through the clouds during the daylight - others called it a nuisance - she tried to look at it indifferently. Rain was rain; it couldn't be prevented, yet it could drastically change things in a matter of seconds. Events and previous engagements were often cancelled under rainy weather conditions, but to her, she just felt a little sad whenever it rained. Why?—she wasn't quite sure, but ever since she'd passed into the age where she was now called a "woman", rain had always been upsetting—depressing, even.
It didn't help that it was raining when things in her life were already going badly—it was just a double dose of unhappiness, it seemed.
She cried long and hard, but even still that didn't make her feel any better. Nonetheless, fixing things she did wrongly without noticing was a difficult task and couldn't be taken lightly.
As of late, it felt as though she'd been doing everything incorrectly: the way she spoke, things she said that perhaps weren't quite true—inadvertent lies—or just the way she was spoken to made a difference. It was worse when someone she loved pointed this out, making her feel more like the fool than she really was—but that didn't mean it hurt any less or that their message declined in worth. It wasn't better when her self-doubts were listed out in front of her by that loved one all at once, making her want to crawl into a hole and die.
Beating upon one's self was never taken lightly, but sometimes, she couldn't help but do it. Hating herself didn't usually feel good, but sometimes it was necessary. When she were too busy finding all the wrong things about herself—the bad traits or habits—there was no time to look for the things she did well. It was a hard thing to do—looking past her problems, that was.
The most difficult part of it all was "fixing" her bad traits. Repairing or attempting to restore a belligerent attitude to what it once used to be when she was ten years old or trying to be less stubborn in certain situations—no matter how right she thought she was—was far from easy.
Trying to mend what was an automatic reaction was hard enough to do… It wasn't like she needed other things to work on about herself added to her already full plate. Nonetheless her other problems were piled on, as if all expected to be corrected at once; being late far too often in making telephone calls or meeting people and eating more neatly sounded easy enough to adjust, but things were never as easy as they sounded, which was precisely why she was in a mess to begin with.
It didn't help how she felt at that moment, though; sitting and thinking about it made her feel no better than before.
Her tears stopped, but even still her face stood frozen, solemn and unhappy as she thought of the day she'd had earlier. It was the reason why she'd come to be this way, but funnily enough, things would probably repair over time.
No one was perfect - no, definitely not her - but that didn't help her mood; in times like these, nothing could comfort the pain she held; only the knowledge of being alone and time were the things that helped her cope.
However, even as she stared out her window, she knew that there would be many more days like these, where rain would rattle against the window in her room and she'd stare at the night sky, holding back the tears of her many saddening thoughts.
These thoughts never quite seemed to go away…the self-reminders of her flaws. They were naught but her never-ending failures.
Thank you once again to the lovely Mackenzie L. for giving this ol' fic a read before I posted. I'm a bad girl for cutting into her precious writing time. -ducks head- That woman does everything for everyone.
Please also take a look at my other one-shot if you want - it's a lot lighter! Thanks in advance to anyone who reviews! =D