Disclaimer. I don't own the characters. There is no more gain than the writing practice that is done here
Chapter 18: the separation – the return – admitting the mistake – the accident
That same night Monica packed all she could of her clothes, and the photos she had brought with her, and very early in the morning she went to the airport to get a flight to NY as soon as possible.
From the airport, she called Rachel to let her know that she was returning to NY, that the flight would arrive at JFK around 7:00 PM, and asked her if she could go to her house.
Rachel was surprised, especially by Monica's voice, she seemed sad and nervous.
"Mon, look, I have half the house unarmed, I'm going to tell Phoebe that you're going to stop at her house, I'm going to look for you at the airport"
"Thanks Rach, we'll talk later."
Monica was anxious to arrive, the flight seemed endless, after picking up her luggage she found herself in the Hall where Rachel and Phoebe were waiting for her. The three of them hugged each other for a long time, and when she ended the hug Monica had tears running down her cheeks. -
She needed to tell them if the delay was happening, and they wanted to know immediately, so they went to an airport bar that they found secluded and quiet.
"Monica, what happened?" Phoebe asked.
"Leave Richard, we parted ways for good..."
"But you're so distraught, what happened to come to this?" Rachel asked.
"I left him, I couldn't take it anymore, he was not the knight in armor I thought, and the dream I was chasing was a mirage, a disappointment that should never have happened..."
"But he did something to you…?" She wanted to know Phoebe,
"No," Monica answered, "He didn't physically hurt myself, but all the time he was manipulating me, he deceived me, and I didn't realize that it was all a ruse to get me back…. with his words, attracting me to the dreams we had together the first time we went out, he was enveloping me…"
And she continued "I don't know, he made me feel like at 26 years old, where he was a knight in armor who would take me to fulfill my dream in Paris…" "by God…. what an idiot I was…"
"At that moment I was fulfilling the biggest dream of my life, I had the love of an incredible man, children, the house with the white fence, and I didn't see it... I can't believe I didn't see it…"
"I was inside a cloud, sure that this was the way, that at 37 years old I had the right to follow that dream, only that it was just a dream, and this new dream it was not real, there was nothing real in it, not even the supposed love that I said feeling for Richard was real … a farce that flooded my head …. I don't let myself think"
"I destroyed my life, Chandler's, the children', because of my stupidity, because I blinded myself with…"
"You. they tried to warn me, dad too, but at that moment I didn't want to hear that I was making a mistake…. I felt at that moment that I was right that I was doing the right thing... and nobody was going to make me change my decision... it was my bet and I was going to win it"
Finally, and with an immeasurable shock that flooded her face, she said "The same, even if at that moment I had heard what they said, it was already late, very late, by the time you found out, Chandler had already discovered it and the irreparable damage had already been done, I had no choice but to move on..."
"Monica, and how long did it take you to open your eyes and head?" Phoebe asked...
"Deep, deep inside of me, and not wanting to admit it to myself, burying it deep inside, I think it was the moment I saw Chandler with the diary in his hands and tears in his eyes, he got up and left. ... something inside me said "what did you do if you love him"
"But more consciously it was when I began to realize Richard's tricks, hiding Erica's calls from me and deleting the call history of my mobile or when I discovered that the trip to Europe, which he had told me that his children had organized all along July and August and that we couldn't ruin it for then, in fact he had organized it himself even before we went to Paris, he had everything programmed so that I could not spend the month of August with my children, giving me 10 days in the end, only because I got crazy…." "Apart from these behaviors, the cloud in which I had lived those months began to dissipate ..."
"Look, there were many things, they appeared one by one, his authoritarianism, his lack of empathy towards my children, but after Christmas I couldn't take it anymore, when we returned to Paris and the course at the academy started again, I enrolled in all kinds of classes, in such a way as to arrive very late at night, and very tired so as not to have to even talk to him…"
"But yesterday, May 15, I decided that I could not continue with the charade before myself. That day was exactly one year after the trip to Paris, and the whole dream had been a disaster, we never had a good coexistence, added to his cheating and deceit, plus the ways in which he treated Erica and Jack... the contemptuous way in which he talked about Chandler when he was referring to him for any reason. And to top it off, that day was my wedding anniversary, and I remembered how you had asked me to change the date, and the haughty way I answered you ..."
"You. They were absolutely right, the date was an affront to Chandler and I let him take it... and he didn't deserve that or anything at all that I did to him"
"Last night, when I returned to the apartment, Richard was waiting for me to talk, he had already realized that ours was not going, that I did not love him, in reality he knew that I had never loved him again, he confessed to me that he believed that, if I got away from NY, from my children, from Chandler, from you, I would fall in love with him again, but now he knew that this was never going to happen, and he agreed that we should separate "
"And, here I am… I lost the true and only love of my life and my children…. and I don't know what to do with my future…"
Her friends didn't ask any more questions, Monica wouldn't stop crying, and they tried to reassure her. Phoebe took her to her house, but she realized that, with her children and her house dynamics in full disarray, it wasn't the best place for Monica to recover.
The next day Phoebe offered Monica to stay in the apartment that had been her grandmother's. She never sold it, she only took care of keeping it clean and in good condition, she wanted to keep it for her children when they were older and wanted to live alone.
Monica accepted the proposal, she really needed to be alone and think about what she would do with her life from now on.
Once she settled in Phoebe's apartment, she bought some groceries, and she began to look for work, she called several acquaintances to let them know that she was back in NY, and they all agreed to call her if there was any news.
She also called her mother to tell her that she was back in NY, but she didn't tell him why.
A week had passed since her return when she found in one of the pockets of the overnight bag the keys to the storage room where Chandler had kept things from the house before selling it.
She was curious, so she went to Queens where the deposit was.
The storage room was big, much more than she imagined, and when she opened it with the help of an employee, she found that it was full of everything, absolutely everything, from the house.
All very well arranged were the furniture in the living room, including her grandmother's, the dining room, her bedroom, the children's bedrooms and the guest room. On one wall was a tall bookcase full of boxes. On the shelf plus something all the table lamps in the house were accommodated. In the boxes, clearly labeled, the ones that contained the bedding, crockery, all the kitchen utensils, and so on, box after box.
She took the one that said "Photos", there she found all her school yearbooks, the gang's photo album, where some photos were missing that Chandler had surely withdrawn, another album with family photos, and it was also missing some photos. And taped to one of the sides of the box was a typed note that said "I kept the albums that contained only photos of the kids for them, so they have the memories of their childhood the day they want to see them. The albums with the photos of the wedding and the honeymoon, since you surely have no interest in keeping them, nor do I, I threw them away."
Monica's heart squeezed, the fact that he had separated from her did not mean that she did not want to keep those memories of happy days…. obviously he must have hated her… he did not leave any evidence of those days…. But those memories were the only thing she had left after the nightmare she had gotten herself into, and now she didn't even have that.
Seeing everything that was in the house accumulated in that deposit was overwhelming. The albums that were left she returned to the box, she would come back to look for them later, but she did not know what to do with the rest…. she would decide when she was clearer in mind.
With anguish in her body, she returned to Manhattan, she was a few streets from the apartment when she distractedly crossed the sidewalk without noticing that a car was coming, she heard it brake and a loud bang, and then everything went black.
