“The sun was setting as I sat on my board looking out over the horizon. California sunsets… there is nothing like them. The sky was like a painting of bold pinks, purples, and oranges, all of them meshing into one, getting ready to dive into the water and bring us night. The remaining sunlight sparkled on the water, glimmering on the surface. It was so peaceful. I didn’t want the day to end. It was one of the best days of my life,” I cried, getting choked up, wanting to swallow it back down, to bury it like I had done my memories and emotions.
“I rode our last wave of the day with tears falling down my face. The sadness that it was over was devastating. I hated feeling that way. I wanted to start the whole day all over again. Put it on constant repeat, so I could play it whenever I wanted to. When I grabbed my board and we walked back to where my mom was, she was smiling. Happy,” I wallowed, not wanting to get to the next part.
I fucking hated the next part.
It broke me.
“To have her be part of our family, to actually have a family that did normal things and spent time together, was all I ever dreamt of. It was the family I so desperately wanted.”
I failed at wiping all the tears away from my face. They were coming so fast, so hard, so unforgiving, like a faucet I couldn’t shut off. I swear he could feel my pain, it resonated that deeply all around us. Stabbing me over and over again, that the Jeep started to become confining, making it harder for me to breathe.
The space was closing in on me and I couldn’t move, I was suffocating in nothing but my own misery. My lungs felt as if they had nothing left in them, the air was gone, and I didn’t know if it would ever come back. My vision narrowed, and sounds became distant. My heartbeat echoing in my ears.
I needed to continue, to push on, and just when I thought that I couldn’t… Dylan grabbed my hand and put it over his heart.
It was so steady.
It was so solid.
It was so safe.
“Breathe, Aubrey. Feel my heart. Feel my breath. Just breathe.”
He watched all of this unfold, but he was willing to sit there and allow me to fall apart. Crumble to pieces in his arms. Shatter like glass in front of his eyes.
In hopes of maybe someday being able to put me back together.
I sucked in air that wasn’t available for the taking, laying my forehead on Dylan’s chest. It was all too much. To relive it all over again and knowing the outcome would still be the same. Nothing would change.
Not. One. Damn. Thing.
The pain…
The hurt…
The loss…
The sensation of my heart breaking all over again.
He rubbed the nook of my neck and I could feel him kissing the top of my head repeatedly, whispering, “Shhh…” again and again.
“Baby, you don’t—”
“We sat there for what seemed like forever, but it wasn’t nearly enough,” I interrupted, needing to get it out.
Needing to tell someone.
Needing to tell him.
Needing him to know I was broken.
“I lied to you, I fucking lied to you,” I uncontrollably sobbed, my vision blurred and my throat ceased, becoming so raw, so dry, so torn into a million pieces.
“I’m so fucking stupid, Dylan. So fucking stupid. I hadn’t noticed that my dad had barely said one word to us all day,” I bawled, shuddering against his chest.
I wanted to hit something, anything, to keep from feeling the emotions that were dragging me down, deeper and deeper.
He gripped my hand, pressing it tighter against his heart, willing me to keep going.
“There we were one, big, happy, fucking family,” I sobbed into his chest, his other arm steady around me.
“We went home and had dinner and my mom, my mom… she mirrored all my happiness, all of my joy, all my excitement for the future and the unknown possibilities. I went to bed that night happy, content. The next morning my dad took me to school. He never took me to school… He kissed and hugged me. Telling me that he loved me and I swear… I swear, Dylan, I heard him faintly whisper he was sorry.” I swallowed hard, choking back the sobs.
“My mom picked me up from school. It was like they had switched places, but she was so sad. Nothing like the woman she was the day before. Not one trace of her was left. On the way home, silence filled the car. My mom stared straight ahead with worry in her eyes. Something was eating away at her, something she couldn’t tell me. Something that would change the rest of our lives. The course of our future. I never saw it coming. When we arrived home, all my dad’s stuff… was gone. When I looked back at my mom, I just knew. My dad had left her. Not only her, he left me, too. He left us. My parents’ aren’t divorced. I lied to you… He just packed up and left without so much as a note. Just like that! It was so cruel what he did… so fucking cruel, Dylan!” I shouted as if he was sitting beside me, as if he could hear me, and it would change things.
As if shouting turned back time and it would make a difference.
As if shouting took away the pain and the hole I felt in my heart.
I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let me. He held it tighter against his heart. Not one time did his steady beat change. It was so stable, so secure, so calm and serene.
So Dylan.
I shook my head into his chest instead, feeling like my skin was burning, as if it was on fire, searing from the inside out. Breaking down with his strong hold around me. Engulfing me with the comfort that I couldn’t feel, that I didn’t want to feel. That I felt I didn’t deserve.
“Why? Why give me hope and let me see what it could be like, only to just rip it all away? Why would he do that to me? Why would he hurt me like that? Why, Dylan, please tell me why? Why would he hurt us like that?” I choked out, the big, huge, ugly tears falling faster and harder.
They were merciless, every last one of them.
I cried so damn hard I was hyperventilating. I had never cried like that in my entire life. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t allow myself to, because I knew, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop.
It would consume me.
And it did.
It was taking over me in the arms of a boy that I really liked. A boy I wanted a future with. I had never felt worse. Only adding to my tears and the hurt of a day I wanted to forget…
But knew I never could.
She was in my lap crumbling to pieces before my very eyes.
I hugged her so tightly trying to hold what was left of her together. Comforting her the only way I knew how. I held her as tight as I could, wanting to mold us into one person, lift her up and take away her pain. I never allowed her hand to leave my heart, hoping that my steady beat would calm her. Whispering reassuring words in her ear with my leveled tone to provide her some security.
Some sense of something.
Anything…
I once read that it helped people in distress. It helped take away some of their agony, their grief, their suffering. It was the body’s natural way of finding stability, finding comfort, finding hope.
It shattered my heart.
She cried harder.
I had never seen someone sob like that before. Having her tangibly breaking down in my arms was almost too much to bear.
I felt so fucking helpless.
Her beautiful face was filled with so much despair and sadness that it caused a physical reaction from me. The ache that I felt in my heart was so foreign and unfamiliar. It was beyond crippling.
I was at a loss.
At that moment I hated her father for her.
I pulled the hair away from her face. She finally looked up at me with a huge hollow vacancy in her eyes. It chipped at my heart a little more. There was nothing left of the strong girl I had known for the last several months. I didn’t recognize the person sitting before me.
There was so much I wanted to say, wanted to do.
I wanted to do everything, but I felt as though I could do nothing. She was hurting in a way I never knew was possible. It cut me deep within my core, a place I hadn’t realized existed inside me. She was trapped inside her own head, held captive within the memories that she desperately tried to forget. I wanted to make her laugh. I’d kill to see her smile, knowing that in the end it wouldn’t matter. She’d let me see a piece of her that she had never shown anyone. The warm light of her innocence was gone, bleeding all over me and I didn’t know how to get it back.
Watching someone I cared about suffer wasn’t just painful, it was crippling. It took everything out of me. My own body felt unfamiliar with all the sensations she was causing. I never understood the concept of someone else’s pain, the way they feel, the harbored damage of one day that could change everything for them. How life might change with a few words, a few seconds, a few moments in time that you wanted to forever change but would never be able to get back.
You would never understand, unless you saw it. It would kill you more than you would ever expect, more than you could ever prepare for.
How was it possible to feel that connected to another person? How was it possible to feel almost everything they’re going through? But not once experiencing it first hand.
You’re just hurting because they are.
I learned right then and there that the hardest part of watching someone you cared about go through turmoil was how helpless love could make you feel.
Everyone suffers. Everyone goes through shit. At times it’s worse than others. At times you feel broken beyond repair, but what I took from that day, from that second, from that moment, was that we now formed a connection and as selfish as that sounds.
I was happy.
I wanted that with her.
And I knew that at sixteen-years-old.
“Baby, shhh… look at me.” I pressed her hand firmer against my chest.
“Feel my heart. Feel all of me. Do you understand? Can you do that for me?”
She absentmindedly shrugged.
“No, darlin. Feel. Me,” I urged, placing my own hand over her heart. It was beating fast and hard with each passing second with each passing moment.
“Feel me…” I repeated, pushing both our hands into one another’s hearts.
Her eyes widened in recognition with an intensity I had never seen before. A gleam in her eyes that needed to break through all the sadness and despair, all the things that ate away at her. Everything she couldn’t change but desperately wanted to.
The memories that made her who she was.
The loneliness.
“Listen to me. I will only say this once.”
She swallowed hard, less tears falling from her eyes, her heartbeat slowed down, mirroring the rhythm of mine.
“I never understood this saying until right now. Until this very moment.”
She sucked in her lower lip and stared into the depths of my soul as I said,
“The deeper the love, the deeper the pain.”