CHAPTER400
It’s been days since Arrick left my room and I am barely functioning. I have moped around, either at home until my mom’s pandering efforts have driven me mad, or at Emma, or Leilas’, who are equally suffocating me. Jake is my only respite, with his shrugged off chill and his ‘life’s too short’ attitude. He tends not to dwell on ‘matters’ with me and just lets me hang out. He’s keeping me sane, while everyone else is mothering me to insanity.
I’m restless, listless, antsy, and just need to let off some steam to feel normal for one night. Every part of my body is screaming to go out and get blind drunk and numb for a few hours, but I’m stopping myself from going down that route again. Really trying to behave, listening to my counselor, whom I saw this morning for the first time again, and trying like crazy to keep my head above water. My hearts bruised and in pain but I’m handling it. I know why I feel this way, and it’s making a difference to how I deal with it.
James, my therapist, suggested keeping a journal to combat these feelings, suggested I take up a hobby or fitness regime to help with the urges to just drown my sorrows. He is fully on board with me taking some sewing classes in town that interest me, and maybe trying my hand at a seamstress course at the local evening college. He thinks a focus will help me move on in life, help me find my path, and for once, my parents aren’t criticizing my choice of following fashion studies. I think they realize it’s better than the life I’ve been living.
Arrick has tried to call me numerous times; I have no idea why he would even try. There is nothing he can say to fix this, and I’m blanking his calls as talking to him will only make this harder to accept. He’s back in the city, news going on about his fight tonight against some well-known pro that could really boost his career, and I’ve already decided I’m going to go to bed and ignore it. While everyone else here gathers at Jake’s house to watch it on his ‘humongous’ ridiculous screen in his cinema room. The families always like to gather for ‘notable events’ like this. Huntsbergers and Carreros, the two halves of my life.
I told myself that I need to cut ties with him if I’m ever going to get past this, have read enough ‘How to heal your heart’ articles in women’s magazines in the last few days to arm myself with every tool women use to get over a broken heart, and am fully committed to doing so. I want my life back, my sanity, and some sense of control over things. I’m on this path now, to make myself happier, and I intend to do everything in my power to change how I’ve been living.
All the usual suggestions have been noted. Get a makeover, cut your hair, get a hobby. Compiled a tick list, sighing at them as I did so, but willing to try anything to get out of this two-year funk which has driven me to this place. I’m being productive, taking matters into my own hands and trying to prove to myself that I can beat this. Treat it like a bump in the road, and distance myself emotionally from what ‘it’ is.
I’ve listed everything, from burn anything connected to him, to wiping him off your social media. I put everything that reminds me of him in a box and gave it to Emma. I don’t want to destroy the things he gifted me over the years, but I know Emma will take care of them in case I ever feel able to have them back. And there is a lot! I never realized, until now, just how often he used to buy me things. Stuffed animals or little trinkets, or gave me meaningful keepsakes like birthday cards with whole paragraph messages inside, letters he sent me when he went to London for four whole weeks and I told him I wanted postcards and ‘snail mail’ as well as texts and calls. He sent me a daily postcard with an attached breakdown of what he was doing on paper, in an envelope with whatever souvenir of his day he’d found. I have café napkins, a bottle cap, a Big Ben keyring, and other random things from that trip.
I’m staying off all social media completely, taking down my accounts for timeout and hoping the break will help me sort my brain out. Instead of all-out deleting him from everything, which would also mean removing thousands of pictures. It would feel wrong to click unfriend or block on things he has always been a part of.
Emma is helping me the best she can, being positive and focused and the joint group of four children, between Leila and Emma, has been enough to exhaust me most afternoons. The twins, Noah, and Wiley are only five, so between them, and Mia, and Lucah, running around the yard, I have found a useful fitness regime.
I even watched little Adam, my brother Ben’s son, while his wife Grace was in town seeing family. He is seven now; the absolute perfect likeness to Ben, and weirdly Lucah. They could pass as brothers, despite no actual blood link. Not that I’m surprised, as Ben and Jake are scarily similar and had once been best friends who looked almost like twins. All these babies have been a godsend the last few days.
I hate to admit it to myself, but being home, and surrounded once more by these people, is doing so much more for me than the last months with my so-called friends. Just the time to be at peace, and not focus on anything except the kids and my family, is in its own way soothing me in ways that it never used to. I guess knowing where my pain has been coming from has changed my whole outlook and made it more manageable. Having that focus, having some sense instead of free falling has really helped me get back to how I used to be, focused, and centered on more.
I’m watching Lucah build sandcastles in his sandpit while Mia hangs upside down on her monkey bars in the back yard, sun beating down, and sewing a tester panel of stitches from a book I got from a local sewing shop. So far, I’ve managed to master six of the fancy stitches, and majorly pleased with myself at my ability to get this so quickly.
“Hey, you.” Jake scoots down on the grass beside me, wearing shorts that are not usually his thing and a loose T-shirt with some obscure band logo I have never heard of. He is obviously in casual mode and home for the day while Emma is taking a nap as her pregnancy progresses and wipes her out more. Jake is an attentive mate in life, he still takes care of her as though she is fragile glass, and I find it endearing that he takes time off work as often as he can to be a daddy and husband first. He used to be such a workaholic.
“Hey.” I smile back at him, hating the similarities today that I can see to his brother in that all too good-looking face. Every now and then I get a major pang from something like this, a look, or a mannerism from Jake, and Arrick flashes across my mind. I have to push it down deep and focus hard on something else.
“You’ve been awfully quiet the last few days; no urges to go get shit faced and sleep in the bushes?” Jake nudges me playfully and I mock scowl his way.
“Remind me why I even like you?” I raise an eyebrow his way and duck when he makes a play for a headlock. I push him away and point at the very sharp needle I am wielding, motioning that I will poke him in the eye if he keeps this up. He just grins and settles down again.
“Because I rescued you, and you are eternally in my debt. Besides, you love me because I keep Emma happy, and as you love her the ‘mostest’, you love me too.” Jake pushes my shoulder again, watching his son trying to feed himself sand with a shudder. “Lucah ... No sand in the mouth, baby. Daddy knows it tastes like yuck, and it’s nasty.” He motions for his son to lower the shovel and the little angelic face does as he is told, lifting a pacifier from beside him and sticking that in his mouth instead. Jake smiles proudly. Obviously smug with the parental control he has exerted over his child.
“You know he buried that thing minutes ago, right?” I point out, as Jake frowns and grimaces.
“Don’t tell Emma I let our son eat sand again, she will string me up. It’s worse than the Play-Doh thing.” He turns his head to check on his eldest child and shoots to his feet when he realizes she is streaking naked across the garden, her little pile of pink sparkly clothes and shoes neatly piled under the monkey bars where she’d been seconds before. I burst out laughing as I watch Jake tackle her into mid-air and haul her back to retrieve her clothes.
“Takes after her daddy, I see.” I giggle as Jake frowns, holding up pink underwear in an attempt to figure out which way they go on while holding a wriggling, naked child, who is a little too old to be streaking.
“Mia, how many times? Daddy doesn’t want the world to see you naked. It really worries me that this is your chosen mode of fashion.” Jake’s frowning while messing with the pile of clothes, plonking her down while he shoves her panties back on her legs and hauls them up. He makes swift action of dressing her back up, proving it isn’t the first time and ends up with her shoes firmly tied on.
“I like being naked, daddy, ... I like the wind.” She says sweetly and innocently up into his face. Jake just looks mortified and shakes his head at her; he furrows his brow harder, something catching his eye over his daughter’s head, alerting him to something else.
“Lucah, NO! ... Put the sand down.”
I turn to see Lucah has the shovel in his mouth and a face literally covered in wet gross sand that hints most is in his mouth already. Jake sits back and sighs as his son tries to spit it out down his T-shirt, and Jake glances my way imploringly.
“I don’t know how Emma does it! How she juggles these two while being pregnant, they’re always into everything. I feel like she must have two sets of eyes and hands.” Jake moves to scoop up his son, setting Mia free, and reaching for wipes to clean the worst of his face. He’s given the nanny time to go sort the children’s rooms and do whatever she does when he decided to take control of babysitting duties.
“Emma is a pretty amazing mom though; she just seems to be effortlessly good at it.” I concur, smiling fondly at the mention of her."
