Six months have passed since I'd thrown Emily out that day, the calls have become less and less as the weeks went by. The letters lingered in their envelopes and my bed cold. I left England a few weeks after I had learnt about 'Beth' Emily's 'ex' girlfriend.
Effy had tried to reason with me but nothing could alter my perspective, my broken heart needed time to mend for the thin stitches to heal and a deep bruising to set in. I had resigned from work like an old retiree, my bones aching from my crushing burden of carrying around this lead heart. As I had kissed Freddie softly on the forehead and breathed in his kid like naivety and thirst for life, I had once been so passionate but slowly it had slipped away, the fervour to do good and to be known, to enjoy the moments. I need to escape myself. I wasn't running away, the opposite really I was stepping from my comfortable zone to figure out who the fuck I was.
Effy, Cook and Freddie were my family. My safe harbours. Even Emily had been a symbol of that. But the problem was I'd never learnt to swim by myself. For all these years, I've blamed Emily for breaking my heart but in truth I had just clung to it as an excuse not to live because I was scared. Scared of having my heart broken again. Scared of going out into the world and experiencing it in case I lose my way, but in reality you can't have experiences until you've lost your way, until you throw yourself into the black barrelling waves of your existence because I see now that at first when you slip beneath the underwater world terror grips you like a claw but eventually you can feel the sand underneath your toes.
As I had lingered at the airport with Effy, I couldn't help but feel a sadness sinking through my pores. It had always been just the two of us, and Freddie of course but now Cook was here and when I returned in six months time everything would be different. She was moving forward as was I, but I feared we were moving in different directions and that terrified me. She must have sensed it, because she pulled me into a crushing bear hug and mashed her lips to mine in a chaste but strong peck as if to reassure me that we still belonged to each other and nothing could change that. She had stuffed a wrapped present into my hands just as I was walking through the gate, her eyes shinning and a small smile on her face.
"Take this, I have one too. So when you come back, we wont have missed anything in each others lives" her voice cracked on the word 'lives' and I realised how much I truly meant to Effy. I nodded and smiled as strongly as I could for her, and waved before stepping through the gate and onto the stretch towards the plane.
As I sit here on the shores of Cyprus my final day before returning to England, the flaming red sunset reminding me of Emily I can't help but smile. Six whole months and I felt different. A weight I'd been carrying around had slipped from my shoulders. I had done many things here, written everyday, danced, learnt to cook, sang, drunk, made friends, made love (but none of them seem to ignite a flame within me; and by them there was only two) and finally found a sense of calm and serenity of who I was. My whole life I had tried to reject who I was. Fighting the shackles of labels of society, and feelings that I was too scared to feel and yet here finally I had broken the barriers. I had learned to love myself, a lone figure with no one to rely on, I had learnt to breath again. I find the truth as I linger on this final page of the journal Effy had given to me; maybe we can never let someone fully love us until we love ourselves.
I won't lie; Emily has rarely left my thoughts, my head swims in a cloud of red haze but instead of fighting it I let it invade me. I let memories of Emily wash over me and I drown in her so much that it's almost like her arms are wrapped around me. When I had first arrived here, I was angry and hurting but the more I had to rely on myself the more I realised Emily had ruined her relationship with someone else for me and knowing Emily she would be absorbed in the guilt of her actions for both Beth and me. A long time ago I had opened myself to Emily in front of all our friends but the fates had taken Emily and I away from each other and I had slipped back into my shell. But as the days passed I felt my heart melt, a red flame flickering deep within me, and every thought or moment I was reminded of Emily, it sparked.
When Emily went away for the summer, travelling with her family I had been sad and lonely but Emily made up this game which she called postcard tag. She'd send a postcard from wherever she was, and then I'd send one from Bristol. It was silly but it made me feel connected and loved because it meant she was thinking of me and had mementos of me. So here I sit with a postcard of Cyprus but I have no idea what to right. How do you tell someone that it wasn't just her fault? That the only thing they'd done was love you but you couldn't handle it and pushed them away. I wish I could show her who I was now. I wasn't afraid anymore. So I'll write the only words that can tell Emily how I feel. The only words she'll understand, hoping she'll remember our postcard tag and understand everything I'm trying to say. With strong handwriting, I gently and slowly write the words, that are pulsing through my veins.
You're it.