Delaney James seemed to have it all-a Manhattan townhouse, a thriving career as a fashion journalist, and a handsome, high-powered husband, but when he announces he's leaving her, Delaney's picture-perfect life unravels. Heartbroken and in need of a...
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Tears stream down my cheeks and drip from my jaw. My chin trembles, and I look up to the cloudless sky, as if the brightness of the day will soothe me. My stomach turns – growing more nauseous by the second – as the anguish in me continues to grow. I moan around an unreleased sob that's causing my throat to ache, and my chest feels heavy as I force myself to hold it in until I have some privacy.
My parents aren't home, so I put the groceries in the fridge and run up to my bedroom. I slam the door behind me and press my forehead against the wood. As much as I'm trying to convince myself anger and confusion are the reasons I'm crying, I can't fight the intrusive thoughts and crippling sadness that's consuming me at the idea that maybe Greyson isn't keeping anything from me. Maybe he's not going through something. Maybe he really can't ever trust me again, and he's simply changed his mind about me. About us.
Can I really be upset with him if that's how he feels? I hurt him deeply and sometimes people can't get past that sort of betrayal.
I slap the palm of my hand against the door as a scream builds in my throat, but when I open my mouth, guttural, strangled sobs erupt out of me and echo through my quiet bedroom.
I'd hate to see myself right now. All swollen-eyed, snotty-nosed, and red in the cheeks. I don't cry pretty like they do in movies and television shows. My skin gets blotchy, and the tip of my nose turns bright red. I sob long after the tears have stopped, leaving me with tearless sniffles and violent gasps of air – almost to the point of hyperventilation.
Tears blur my vision, and when I blink, my mascara coated eyelashes stick together. My chest feels like it's being crushed by a one-hundred-pound boulder. My lungs are on fire, and I keep trying to take deep breaths, desperate to fill them with air. It hurts, but despite the pain, the sadness, and the heartbreak, I'm grateful, because these feelings are proof that I'm alive. In the last two months I've been numb. I've been vacant. I've been completely empty. I've been too close to the familiarity of wanting to die, and I never want to go back there.
Tears mean I'm feeling, and feeling means I'm living, so I should thank my tears for reminding me that I'm still here, still fighting, and at the end of the day I'm lucky, because I have something that hurts to lose.
I'm still in my room long after the sun goes down. Long after I hear my father come home from work, and long after my mother announces dinner is ready from the bottom of the stairs. I've cried most of the day, and even though heartbreak has been in my rearview mirror as of late, I haven't forgotten how draining it can be. I haven't had the energy to do much more than nap and stare at the ceiling, and when I'm sick of doing that, I turn on the television. Almost as soon as I get lost in a true crime show about a woman who killed her DoorDash driver because he brought her the wrong food, there's a soft knock on my bedroom door.
"Come in," I say, my voice hoarse from hours of crying.
