When the thoughts about cutting herself or hurting herself started coming back to her, Jane knew that something was wrong.
‘Damn! Not this again!’ she thought to herself.
She laid on her back on her bed, one that she hated, and tried to cry, but she couldn’t it. Days earlier, she had thought about the last time she cried yet she couldn’t quite remember.
The last time she had tried to cry was in 2012, it was supposed to be the worst day of her life, yet she could not shed a tear. Since that day she was never able to. Since that day she also withdrew herself. She learnt to build her walls high, when someone broke them down, she would with time push them out and build them higher.
She lay in her bed thinking that something must have been wrong with her for having not cried in her times of need and despair. Years ago, all her days had been defined by tears. She had been bullied for so long, and she tried to get over it, but she did not. Instead, she started to hurt herself and the permanent solutions to end things she seemed to look for never worked.
She knew it was all over, until he came into her life. The boy that years before had taught her to keep it to herself when she had feelings for someone. She remembered well why; Jane had mentioned to her ‘friend’ that she had a crush on him, Kyle. The friend went and told everyone in their class. He found out, and he said some mean things, he was embarrassed that the freak had a crush on him.
Years later, they started talking, and ironically, he became a cure to her depression and her feelings of harm. He taught her what love was. He told her that she was beautiful… a word that had become foreign to her. He was the only person who saw right through her just by looking at her. He was the only person, who knew how she felt by the first word she said when they spoke through the phone. He was the only person who could see right behind that fake smile she wore everyday. He was the only one who noticed how good she had learnt to hold her tears. Then after many years, he just walked away.
Yet today Jane wished that Kyle could be here for her. She could not have held up all the pain she had inside. She could have let out all those tears she had held back for five years.
At this very moment she felt like a failure. She wasn’t able to get a job. She felt like the most stupid person on the face of the earth. The confidence she had built over the years had been shattered within months like broken china. She read, she listened to music, she read books, she talked to people, yet it never helped. Confidence was a work of art she needed to re-build and she knew that it took ages to do this.
Jane was certain that if Kyle was here, he would have the right words, he would have helped when she began to crumble into pieces. But he had left, she had let him leave, she had not fought. He was the person she thought about every single night, his memories were the reason she would stay awake in the middle of the night. One night she wished she could forget him, like he was never in her life, until she realized that without him images of her childhood would be nothing but darkness.
She held out her hand into the clear air, wishing that his were there to hold hers, knowing too well they were not. Then she tried to convince herself to think about what what Kyle would have told her when she felt like her life was a nightmare. Deep down inside she knew it did not matter, especially because he was not there. His memories were all she had, hope was all she held on to, hoping that one day they could meet, talk about why they grew apart, and forgive each other.
