Day turns into night and into day again. I lose track of time. I cry for so long that my eyes feel like someone’s slicing them with razor blades and my chest starts to physically hurt from the pain. Eventually, the tears dry up. There are no more. The pain remains, but it’s as if it’s happening to someone else. I’m detached from it. Separated somehow. Now, there’s just a dark cloud that descends around me. One that I can’t shake no matter what I do.

The next two weeks are consumed by melancholy. Hours blend into days and days into nights. I become something of a zombie. I don’t cry much anymore, I just wander around lost. Detached from the world. Unreachable. I avoid everyone. I stay on campus for as long as I can, wandering the busy stacks of the library. And when I do come home, I avoid everyone except Juliet, whom I can’t really avoid even if I had tried. Luckily, she has the good sense to pretty much leave me to my own devices. She doesn’t pester me with questions and she doesn’t ask me how I’m feeling. Mainly, she just leaves me be, which is exactly what I want. As for Tristan and Dylan, I don’t see them at all. I can’t. I don’t think I have the strength to deal with my feelings if I were to see Tristan again. And I’m too mad at Dylan. I can’t believe that he went out of his way to say those things to his father. Those things that hurt me to the bottom of my core. He doesn’t want to be married to me. He doesn’t want to be engaged to me. I, of all people, know how much he had regretted marrying me instead of Peyton. At least with Peyton, there’s a history. They love each other. And they have for a long time. And even if they were to marry by accident and then get divorced….well, that seems just like something out of their story.

So, if that’s true, why did he have to go and tell everyone that he wanted to marry me? Why did he have to get such a big ring? And why did he have to throw it in his father’s face? There are some things that I will probably never understand. But I will talk about it with him, one of these days. Just not now. Not yet.

Despite all of my melancholy and lonesomeness, I did manage to come to a decision. A pretty important one, too. I’m going to transfer to University of Southern California next year. It’s something that I had been thinking about ever since this whole mess with Tristan happened. And now I think that getting out of town and going to a completely different school will be the answer to my problems. I know it looks like I’m running away. It sort of feels like that too. But I honestly don’t think I can solve my problems by staying here. They are too complicated and convoluted. No amount of talking will make Tristan understand what happened. Or forgive me for what I’ve done. No amount of talking will allow me to forgive him for sleeping with Kathryn or for starting this whole thing in the first place. At this point, it feels like all we can hope for is space. Distance. Space, distance, and time will allow both of us to move on and perhaps, one day, be in that nice space again where we can talk to each other without wanting to kill each other.

USC will be my opportunity to start over. It’s a good school in a warm climate near my home. I know LA. LA is my home. Nothing bad, nothing this bad, has ever happened to me there. And it sounds like the best thing. I’m only in my freshman year and I can barely see myself making it through this winter in tact.

It is with this attitude of cautious optimism and hopefulness that I walk into my public speaking class that Friday and raise my hand to make my first real speech. I have not had anything to drink, and I’m under no mind-altering substances, not even caffeine. Surprisingly, the jitters and the fear that plagued my other speeches didn’t accompany this one. No. It’s like I’m a completely different person now. I clear my throat and look down at my notecards. The assignment is to give a public speech in a professional situation and I’ve prepared a lecture on Jane Austen. I did my midterm paper on Jane Austen for my Victorian Literature class and I give a cautious, but thorough speech on her life and work. Yes, I rely on the notecards a little too much. Yes, I avoid eye contact with almost all students in the class and instead choose to look out into space, somewhere beyond their sight lines. But overall? Overall, the speech goes incredibly well. I speak clearly and my voice only shakes a little bit when I forget to breathe. I take a few sips of water as my mouth runs dry, but I don’t rush through them and I don’t worry about tipping over the water bottle and everyone laughing at me.

“I don’t know what it is, but something about me feels different now,” I tell Dr. Greyson at our next meeting. I’m going on and on about the success of my speech and how in awe I am over the whole experience.

“What do you think it is?” she asks, taking off her reading glasses and letting them dangle around her neck on the ornate leather rope.

“I’m not sure,” I shrug and really think about it. “But I sort of think it has something to do with everything that has happened. In the beginning of the semester, I was so focused on Tristan and our relationship and how he wasn’t helping me prepare for the speeches that I was paralyzed by them. And now, now that everything happened as it happened…I don’t know, it feels like I’ve been through too much to almost care what those people think.”

“Very good,” Dr. Greyson says, nodding approvingly. “I’m very proud of you with making so much progress, Alice.”

“What progress did I make?” I ask.

“You’re giving yourself a voice. When you first came here, you were lost in your own mind. You didn’t care what you thought and felt. You only seemed to care about what other people thought and felt about you. It’s almost like you, the inside you, didn’t exist. And now…here she is. You’re embracing your flaws and mistakes. You’re owning them. But you’re not letting them dominate your life. You’re no longer silencing yourself.”

I think about that for a second. She’s right. Of course she’s right. I have been silencing myself for way too long. I’ve been living trapped in my own fears and insecurities instead of simply embracing myself for who I am. The ironic thing is that the more I seem to embrace myself and my insecurities, the less insecurities I seem to have. It’s as if I have only been manifesting them as a way to protect myself. When in reality, they’ve been hurting me more than they have been helping me.