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Even if my mood was significantly lifted by Chris and his earnest, romantic hopes, I still wanted to wallow in my previous miseries. That’s the sort of momentum that is hard to put a stop to.
It wasn’t just Mom wearing me down at that point. It wasn’t the fact that we ended the call with an extra dose of tension and criticism. That hadn’t helped things, sure. Nor did it help that I was still dealing with the ghosts of the past retreats. But above all, the act of unpacking just seemed unbearable: an unbearable necessity. Whether or not I wanted to admit it, my mom was right; I did need to take ALL of those clothes and items out of the suitcases and into their proper resting places, but it was a lot. It was so much that the necessity of it all was actually a deterrent. The inherent insistence that it be done stoked the petulance that my mother had brought out with all her ranting and “advising.”
So I fell back into the bed and groaned into the pillow as a malaise continued to swallow me up. My groan was a shout into that void, into that storm cloud lingering overhead. But of course, it did nothing. It didn’t even make me feel better.
As my cry of frustration wrapped up, my phone vibrated again. This time, I had no idea what was to come. There were too many options and too many variables to consider. So I looked at the screen with no thought as to what I might find. And that was fitting, in many regards, because nothing could have prepared me for a message from Ellie.
I got the promotion, she said.
Above that text were a flurry of others that I had ignored. And so, you would think that some sort of bell or alarm would sound in my mind that maybe I needed to not answer this message. While I was well aware that there was no good or justifiable reason to ignore Ellie, it was the sort of thing that–once started–I should have committed to. If not, I would be sending mixed signals, which I didn’t want to do, but in the moment, I didn’t think about that at all.
Instead, I replied, Congratulations! with a smile both on my face and another hastily assembled in the message with a colon and a parenthesis.
She returned the small gesture of joy and added, The major roadblock got sacked.
Wide-eyed, I laughed but kept my cool in the response. Aidan got fired?
Rumors say so. He’s gone. He said to someone on LinkedIn he got a job offer somewhere else, but there’s no new position on his profile. And he closed out his job with us.
But he’s the kind to always land on his feet, I pointed out. That’s how he got that job in the first place.
I could almost hear her chuckle as she recalled the many conversations we had about him, all the jokes we cracked in the comfort of each other’s presence. But that must not have been her reaction, judging by the next message I received.
So I have your attention now? Ellie suddenly snapped.
I recoiled, but it was a fair question. I had spent so much time dodging her that this sudden break in that habit needed clarification. It was only right. For whatever it might have given her, be it a guide to restoring her trust in me or (more likely) a blueprint for a complete break between us, she deserved an answer. But I didn’t give her one. It wasn’t that I deliberately decided not to tell her what I was thinking. Rather, I just didn’t know what was going on in my head. It had been easier to disconnect and to not explain my poorly thought-out stunt to her or why I had run into this fellowship. Disconnection meant she didn’t have to always console me, and I didn’t have to always protect her from me. However, that didn’t mean it was something I could properly explain. Quite the opposite. The words wouldn’t come. There was just a cloud hovering over my head. It resisted description, and Ellie deserved a proper description.
But I had to give her something, so I texted her, I took the fellowship.
I could feel her confusion from a distance. I could almost see her standing at a crossroads, trying to figure out which path of conversation to take or which way to respond to my statement. But that was all I had. I couldn’t read her mind to see why she was making the choices that she was. There was just her final selection.
In the end, Ellie decided to ask, So when are you leaving?
I cringed. My entire body collapsed on itself, bending around my quivering heart. Said heart had stopped beating in dismay as I was confronted with the damage I had done to this friendship. While I hadn’t fully burnt it to the ground, I had damaged its structural integrity, meaning it may need to go down, regardless. Or Ellie might tear it down, whether it was necessary or not. (Lord knows, I would never be able to do it myself.) In many ways, the loss was imminent, but there was this cruel and lingering hope that maybe I could salvage it somehow. Maybe, just maybe, I hadn’t done as much irreparable harm as I was thinking I had, and if I could say the right thing, then maybe I could fix this. Maybe I could save it.
But I should have known better than to be optimistic. Because I had to rely on myself for that great rescue. And of course, I couldn’t manage something like that. Rarely did I ever get these sorts of things right. I just wasn’t capable of it.
Briefly, I thought about lying to her, telling her that I had to leave now with a quick send-off on the end, but that wasn’t true. That wasn’t how fellowships work; I got special treatment because I was an alumni close with faculty on the committee and the university was desperate to undo a mistake. And that rushed plan wasn’t something I was forced into. It wasn’t a demand, per say, but a blessing.
‘Honestly,’ I wanted to tell her, ‘I’m fundamentally broken as a person. I’ve always been. I never know what to do or say. And while everyone has moments like that, this is my default state. I tried too hard to be a decent person around you. I used so much energy and soul, and now those reservoirs are empty. And that led me to this implosion. I imploded. I’m sorry. But I was always going to do that.’
But I didn’t say any of that. Having her read that was asking too much of her. It was too much emotional labor. So I couldn’t send that message.
Instead, I sent something so vague as to be potentially worse. I already left. I’m sorry.
When that was done, I dropped the phone face down on the bed. It buzzed, and at first, I didn’t check it. I was busy trying to get the mattress to swallow me completely, but it was not moved by my pleas or arguments. So I tried to just rot in bed, marinating in my miseries, but I couldn’t even do that.
There’s a point in the grand spectrum of despair where you can’t even feel it anymore. You’re too beaten down to feel anything. I couldn’t tell you exactly where that point in the spectrum is, but that’s where I was while my last small sliver of hope took one final dying and strangled breath with a last buzz of the phone before it was just silence.
And in that silence, the small cottage that held so many good memories felt cramped and constricting. The walls were barbed and closing in. I couldn’t breathe. More figuratively than not, but it was a little of both.