Disclaimer: Sadly I am not Stephenie Meyer. Twilight and these characters belong to her, I'm just borrowing them for a short while. No copyright infringement is intended.
My hands were shaking and my chest ached. I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out.
An instant later my stomach clenched and I knew that I was going to be sick. I raced outside and had just made it beyond the drive before vomiting. If I was able to think clearly or at all I would have realized what a strange phenomenon this was. Sure, I had been sick before in order to expel human food. Occasionally we were forced to eat something when someone grew suspicious and started paying attention. But this was blood-I had never, ever, in all my years been sick on blood. And it was more than a little disconcerting to be vomiting blood. That's not a good sign for anyone, human or vampire.
I noticed that my whole body was trembling. Staying bent over, with my hands on my knees, I began taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself and regain control. After some time-minutes or hours or days, who knew?-I finally felt like I was more myself.
Then my brain kicked in...
What in the world did I expect to read? I had abandoned her, told her the most hurtful things that I could imagine, so that she would let me go. Did I think that she was going to be fine the next day?
Of course she went through a rough time. Didn't I? Wasn't I still? But she was human. I was sure that after a period of time she had healed and recovered and moved forward with her life. A real life...
I was suddenly overcome with a need to confirm that this was the case. That she had moved on and found happiness. I couldn't get inside fast enough.
Dear Edward – I thought that my epiphany that you weren't returning was the bottom and that I could slowly move up from there. I wasn't expecting an instant recovery or anything, but maybe a slow gentle incline. You know, one you don't notice until you've gone a great distance. And when you turn around to see how far you've come, you're surprised to learn that you've actually just climbed a huge mountain. Only it was effortless because you did it a little at a time.
No such luck.
It's actually worse now.
Now when I dress in the morning I can see that my clothes don't fit. As I brush my teeth I see the horrible dark circles under my eyes. As I walk the halls at school, I see the looks I get and hear them whisper. While I sit across from Charlie at the dinner table I see the concern in his eyes and the pain that I'm causing him. I see it all now, and yet I feel powerless to stop it.
I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to be a shadow of who I used to be. But what else can I do? It takes every ounce of energy that I have just to keep myself going through the motions. I'm trying so hard just to put one foot in front of the other, to breathe in and breathe out.
During one of the whispered conversations in school, I overheard someone call me a zombie. I couldn't even argue or be angry because they're right-it's an apt description. Ironic, isn't it? I had to lose my vampire boyfriend to become the undead. This isn't the mythical creature that I imagined myself transforming into, but I suppose there are some similarities.
I can't eat.
I can't sleep.
I never realized how long one night could be. No matter what I do, every night I suffer from some variation of the same nightmare and wake up screaming, crying, shaking. I've tried keeping myself awake. I've tried to induce a dreamless sleep with nighttime cold medicine. I even tried some of Charlie's beer. But the result is always the same. Each night I'm doomed to relive some sick twisted version of your leaving. How can I expect to move past this when my mind forces me to experience it again and again?
I wonder if you know how the real life version played out. Were you watching from a distance, amused by the feeble human? Or were you long gone by then?
I tried to chase after you. Yeah, futile, I know. But I wasn't really thinking clearly. By the time I realized what was happening you were gone. I thought maybe if I talked to you I would be able to change your mind or at least understand what had happened. I finally got myself moving, ignoring the scrapes and bruises I was accumulating as I trekked through the forest. It started to rain and before I knew it, it was dark. I could feel this hole ripping open in my chest and I couldn't stay on my feet any longer. So the next time I fell, I stayed down.
I must have been delirious. I thought that I had heard a wild animal nearby at one point. And a few times I thought that I heard my name being called in the distance. But I couldn't manage to move or care.
It's all a little fuzzy, but eventually someone from the search party found me and carried me home. I know that the doctor came. I know that there were tons of people looking for me.
I remember asking Charlie how he knew where to look for me and he told me about the note that you forged. In that moment somehow I knew that everything else was gone too. But that didn't stop me from tearing up the stairs to see that it was true. At the time I thought it was fitting that you had stolen all of it. After losing the most important thing in the world, the rest doesn't really matter, does it?
But as awful as that was, the nightmares are worse. Worse, because some part of me knows what's going to happen before it does. Worse, because even though it is a product of my own mind I'm still powerless to change the outcome. Worse, because I know that even as my heart is still racing from the latest nightmare it's going to start all over when I close my eyes again.
At first, Charlie would come charging into my room thinking that I was being attacked and murdered. Before long though he started ignoring it. For awhile I thought that he couldn't even hear it anymore, that he was managing to block it out and sleep through it.
But today, I learned differently.
Charlie confronted me tonight during dinner. He told me that he can handle my "moping" but that he can't overlook the night terrors. He knows that I'm not sleeping and that it's unhealthy. He said that he doesn't know how to help me but it's clear that I need help. So he gave me two options.
I can move to Florida to live with my mom or I can go into therapy. I didn't know that Charlie had it in him to throw down an ultimatum, but there it is. He gave me tonight to think about it and I have to give him my answer in the morning.
But the truth is there's really no choice. I'm not going to Florida. I love my mom, more than anything. But I can't live with her, not when I'm like this. Which means that tomorrow morning I will begrudgingly agree to go into therapy.
I've been thinking tonight about what I'll be able to say. I suppose that I can tell him that I've been depressed since my boyfriend dumped me and left town. But that hardly explains it. I'm sure he'll think I'm a basket case teenager who's being melodramatic. Maybe I am.
How in the world am I going to create and stick to a plausible story? I can barely drag myself through the day and now I'll have to come up with extra energy for this? And everyone knows that I'm the world's worst liar. He'll probably see right through me.
But there is another option. I've thought about telling the truth. The whole truth.
I'm fairly certain that if I go that route I'll find myself admitted to a psychiatric hospital sooner rather than later. And I can't help but wonder if maybe that would be easier. Instead of investing all of this energy in trying to act normal (and failing miserably), I could just be me. No expectations, no pretending, no worries, no responsibilities.
It sounds nice.
I haven't made any decisions yet. But I'll have to decide soon.
And I know what you would say if you were here. You'd tell me not to tell the truth, not to take the easy way out. To tough it out for Charlie and graduate this spring. But you're not here...
Guess I'll get to make my own decision and decide my own fate.
