Title: Name on a Crown
Summary: They forced me out, really, with their way of tip-toeing around his name. I found it a few months later in an old online article. It made no difference. Effy-centric
Notes: This is really not my forte given that it a combination of Skins and stream-of-conscience writing. I was really writing this for myself to kind of understand what Effy went through post-Freddie. I know Skins Fire is out, but I haven't seen it. All I know is that she doesn't acknowledge Freddie which is kind of a downer.
One day Naomi actually said his name in front of me. I say actually because people are always on their toes around me, even more than before when – yeah. The dark days.
That's what made me do it, really. Get out. Get away. It's all the same.
Back then, I knew that he left me, but I still didn't understand why. Because I knew that he loved me. And I knew that he was trying, perhaps even harder than I, to remain sane in the process.
It didn't matter, I guess.
I used to think about every possible scenario. Used to positively torture myself. I don't do that anymore. Not since I was stoned out of my mind and searched his name on the computer one night.
A few hits. One small article.
(Death of… Body found…)
I knew if I made the same mistake as last time then I would end up dying, whether by my own hand or as a result of my actions. There would be nobody to save me this time. I couldn't let myself fall victim to feeling. Feelings made me go mad –
("You made me go mad!")
I was alone.
And so I didn't feel. Didn't let it register in my mind that he was –
It was easier to believe him to have run away. It was easier yet to believe he had fallen out of love with me.
I would rather that. I would rather him have broken my heart. It's what I've been believing. I need a lesson that love is worthless after what I got myself in to. Look how it left me. Bruised and broken and exploding at the seams, landed myself in the hospital and therapy and – the dark days. Yeah.
(If I acknowledge his death, I'll know that love is not worthless. Love is beautiful and saves people, it saved me, it made me feel everything, everything all at once, feeling is such a brilliant - )
I don't feel anymore. It's like he didn't happen.
Therapy worked a bit, I guess. I don't see so much of the shitty stuff. It's just stuff to me now. It's like I'm looking through a window most of the time.
I almost fucked it all up though. One night, in bed with a stranger, long after he had passed out beside me. I was pretty bad, seeing things. I wasn't smart that night. I had done so good and then –
"Eff."
It was so small, right in my ear that I half-fell out of the bed, struggling. Because it was his voice, so real, so overwhelming.
I pushed myself quietly out the sliding door onto the balcony.
And it all came back.
It brought me to my knees, all of the feelings, the breaking of my heart.
(So this is what it's like.)
I didn't understand love until I found him. I understood now how much of a double-edged sword it really is.
"I want to go with you, I want to – I want to – "
There is a reason why I didn't think of him. It brings me back to the dark days. I was doing so well, so fucking awesome. I left that all behind. It was hazy. Everything was hazy except for –
"Freddie, take – me – with you."
I cried myself into oblivion, the first time I had since he left. I felt it all coming back, the suffocating of my skin and the pulse of all the people that wanted to hurt me.
I heard the voices. That was the worst.
But there was one voice I recognized in the screaming masses that sounded in my head. A calm voice. A steady one.
And I held on until I fell asleep, clutching the edge of the balcony so as to not fall down.
(He told me to stay.)
I still don't think of him. It hurts too much. I think I finally realized what all happened, kind of. Didn't really come to terms, but subconsciously I know.
What I really know is that those were the dark days, and everything is hazy except for –
I clutched my purse the next day and walked directly into a new city, one where nobody knows that Effy used to have good days and bad days and very bad days. A city where nobody knows that she's not one for talking and that she likes to play games with her eyes and that she knows she is the loneliest person ever and that she won't ever do anything to fix that ever again.
I felt something stir in me the moment I walked down the streets. Nobody really looked at me. Nobody looked at me funny.
They were never going to know what hit them.