The John Hughes Club

Chapter Thirty Seven

Getting over heartbreak is an art form, and it's one that I'm yet to master. It's been a week since I said that devastating goodbye to Chas on the beach, and it's not hurting any less. Holed up in my room, I pass the time with drawing, listening to music, revising, avoiding my mum and crying an insane amount of tears. When I think that I can't possibly cry anymore, I do just that...cry.

I only leave my room to go the toilet, shower and to eat—not that I'm eating much. The truth is, I'm not doing too much of anything right now. I feel raw on the inside. Appear raw on the outside. I can't stand being in the same room as my mum. She keeps trying to talk. Keeps wanting to make things right. But we both know that the only way she can do that, is by not being with Rob Summers. In the kindest way possible, she's already told me that isn't going to happen, so all of her kindness and trying to talk to me, is a complete waste of both of our time. If she's with Rob, I can't be with Chas. That hurts. It's going to hurt for a very long time. Until that hurt doesn't make me look at my mum as being the physical representation of why I can't be with the boy I fell in love with, I can't be near her.

To be honest, I haven't wanted to be near anyone. Ros, Ella and Zigs have all been messaging and FaceTiming me, but I'm not good company at the moment, so I don't see why I should pretend to be anything otherwise. They all know why I am feeling this way, they know about the whole hideous reason why myself and Chas are no longer together, so they're being really patient with me. Ros actually said something very sweet the other day, which of course, made me cry. She said "time will be your friend, just like I am". I know a week isn't a long time in terms of a break-up, but after the week I've just endured, I don't know if I can endure another. So as sweet as Ros was being, I really don't think that myself and time are going to be friends. I can't even bear to look at my clock in my room. If I do, I just feel angrier and angrier. It just reminds me that I've been apart from Chas for longer and longer.

I can't seem to escape any of my thoughts of him. I used to love escaping with my thoughts of him, but now, those thoughts do more harm than good. My life has become an endless circle of not being able to escape.
I can't escape my mum.
I can't escape my room.
I can't escape Chas.

Everything inside feels anaesthetised. I feel numb. Morosely numb. The days are slow and kind of detached. I know I'm lost. Incomplete. Just like I did when Anais died, I'm internalising everything. I am quiet. Getting through the days and nights as best as I can. I am feeling grief, I know that. It might be for a completely different reason, but grief doesn't care about the reason for its manifestation. The hole I am in is not the same hole I was in over my sister, but this hole is just as dark and just as frightening. That's why I called dad last night. I was in a bad way, and the only person I wanted to talk to, was him. Until that phone call, he had been oblivious to my heartbreak, including the reason for it. I don't know why I kept it from him. It had been incredibly hard to confide in Ros and Ella, I knew that it would have been so much harder to confide in my dad. And in some strange way, I wanted to protect him for a little while longer. I know he still loves my mum, and I didn't want him to know that she was now with someone else. I didn't want him feeling anything to like how I do about Chas. It's a cruel kind of pain. An endless pain. No, I didn't want dad feeling that. He's been working as well, travelling up to Scotland in his truck, so I always worry about him when he's covering such long distances. However, he had called me a few times, and I kept ignoring him. I knew that if I heard his voice, I would fall apart. So wrongly, I ignored him. Then he called mum, who sternly said that it was one thing to ignore her, quite another to ignore him. She also went on to say that if I didn't want to tell him about what was going on, that she would. There was so much chaos in my head last night, that my hurting thoughts and my hurting heart, had me calling my dad very late in the evening. I was so upset, I don't think any of my sobbing sentences actually made much sense to him. In the end, dad had to hang up. He needed to find somewhere to safely park his lorry, so we could talk everything out. For nearly an hour, we did. We talked. I cried some more. And dad listened. I can't say I feel better about telling him the truth, because just like it has me, the truth has hurt my dad. I heard the shock and disappointment in his voice. I heard the sadness he felt over realising that he and mum really were over. I think a part of him had always hoped that they might have found their way back to one another again, but Rob Summers has snuffed out that hope.