Home Ice.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Avery

Going a day at a time is really all I can do.

I'm excited about the future but the realization of everything that happened hits me like a tidal wave every five minutes. It's easier to get out of bed now at least, but I am in the constant state of feeling like my stomach is dropping. The only other time that I felt like this was the months following my breakup with Finn.

That day where I was sitting at the window helped me a lot, I think. I don't know how I got there, but I got lost in my thoughts and suddenly was spiraling through everything shitty that's happened to me in the last eight years. All of it.

Finn was the only one I could take it out on. Honestly, him leaving hurt more than most of the things that happened - if not all of them. Sure, my parents got divorced and my dad dropped dead but not having my boy in my life destroyed me in a whole other way, one that I didn't think was even possible and completely unlike any heartache I'd ever felt. The person who I swore was going to be by my side forever walked away from me, suddenly and with no good reason.

At the time, I had no idea where we would be now. Even though my gut and my heart stayed on him, I thought we were done. I tried to move on like everyone told me to but I didn't want to lose the impact he had on me, I didn't want to move on at all. I wanted to continue to feel his impact on my life, I wanted the marks he made on my heart to be there forever. I didn't even want the bad ones to fade. I so desperately clawed at every feeling that I got from when I was with him and willed them to say, down to forcing myself to remember the smallest touches and most mundane moments.

Time was the hardest. As the months went by and we had been apart as long as we were together, I felt more and more empty. Every anniversary, every birthday and holiday - the hole in my heart just kept growing. I thought time was supposed to heal me but it dug the knife in deeper. How was I so awfully hurt over someone I hadn't shared love with longer than we lived it?

Finn didn't cheat on me yet I still felt cheated. I never worried about him hooking up with other girls or showing himself emotionally to someone else and he never made me regret that. I know how he only had his heart set on me. Feeling cheated was never a feeling I thought I'd feel with him.

I wasn't cheated on, but I was cheated out of our love. It shouldn't have ended, there was nothing we did that made us not work. We had something that people sing songs about and I was cheated out of it. Years that could have been filled with love and peace, gone with only heartache and longing to be in its place.

I was cheated because being so deeply in love wasn't enough. How wasn't it enough?

Clearly it turned out to be, but I can't stress how much that didn't matter at the time. I can say all of this, but the realistic part of me knows that we were at different places in our lives and the space didn't have to be seen as entirely bad. Maybe not needed and could have saved a lot of tears, but we got to start our careers and maybe that would have been hindered if we were so focused on one another instead.

But forget about the thoughts of him seeing other people when we were apart. Holy fuck, that has to be high up on the list of things that kills my soul.

I was so hesitant to move on because I was so focused on the possibility of him finding out. And then what? What if he hadn't moved on and when he found out that I did, he would? What if he started sleeping around and our love just became a forgotten memory?

The thought of his arms around someone else or his lips against another girl's literally would keep me up at night, sick to my stomach with a mind that was nothing but cruel to me. I knew I shouldn't have been so focused on it, I knew I was doing it all to myself but it didn't matter. I was still doing it, I was still torturing myself no matter how much I tried to stop. I would have sworn that he was holding a vice grip on me, but in reality I was the one who wasn't letting the thought of him go.