• PRESENT DAY •
With our fight echoing in my ears, I don’t follow Katrina off the porch. I don’t even watch her stalk off into the sunset, doing what she does. Pushing us apart for flimsy, worthless reasons and hiding from the damage. Instead, I head directly up the stairs, hitting each step heavily. Whether I’m running from or chasing my feelings, I don’t know.
I ignore the discomfort of being in this house without her. It’s our space but not mine. Even though I’ve been living here for two months—waking up in the bed down the hall, brushing my teeth over the sink— right now, I feel like I’m intruding. The windows feel watchful, like they’re looking in instead of me looking out.
While the sunset is starting to shock the sky orange, I reach my room. It’s instinct to drop into my chair and open my laptop. I’m ready to write everything raging in me, to put this heartache into words. To process and move through these feelings using this psychological bloodletting onto the empty white page. I open the document with ritual focus. Preparing myself, I fix my eyes on the unwritten first line.
I can’t put my fingers on the keys.
I just can’t do it. Resistance I’m unfamiliar with holds me in place, keeps me from writing. This hurt is mine and Katrina’s. It belongs only to us. No one else. For once, I want to live the pain instead of dressing it in fictional clothing. It might heal cleaner. It might make me better.
Resigned, I close my computer and sit alone with the wound in my heart.