Diamond: The Promise

Chapter 51 "I'd do whatever I could do"

~Iria~

11/5/24

It's not easy, I once was on top and the next day I didn't have anything. One day I had everything, I had the best work in the world, one that I enjoyed and for first time it was something that I did because I wanted, because I was the one in love with it. I spent the whole day making love with my boyfriend and stealing him kisses in that huge boarding school that I got to believe it was my home.

One day I was happy but then I blinked, and when I opened my eyes again I realized everything was gone.

But it came the day when the meaning of making love disappeared. It came the day I fell because of my lack of strength. It came the day someone stood up to me demanding there was no way I could win a fight and I had to shut up, aware that it was true. It came the day I spent an hour in front of the mirror trying to make my eyes shine without being successful and so came the day that I realized I lost myself, that I lost the part of me that defined me. It came the day I looked out of the window and saw the storm outside, the day I realized I had lost everything, myself too. That day I realized I was alone.

Also, between all those days, in the one I figured out I didn't have anything left, I realized too I still had Ethan and somehow, being alone with him felt less lonely.

Because it also came the day Ethan grabbed me before I fell, that day I thought I would crash with the floor but he prevented the hit. It came the day Ethan stood in front of me, hugging me so anybody could see me cry when I broke down in a corridor now that I couldn't stand any longer the pain of losing myself. It came the day that Ethan spent hours in front of me and a plate of food. It came the day he started texting me every three hours to ask me if I had ate something. It came the day he kissed me making me take the vitamins my body needed. It came the fucking day he cooked some pancakes and started to care about me again.

And since that day... everything changed. Since that day life hit different by being alone with him, always with him.

That was all I thought about when I walked to work with Molly, lately with her I just talked about Ethan. She knew everything about Ethan and me but... she also knew everything about Tristan and me.

Molly didn't do it on purpose but sometimes she made me some questions that left me thinking... like now.

How are they different? She asked me one day I assured their ways of being were opposite.

Ethan's makes the world shut up, when I'm with him I forget about everything else and it's just us. I feel like I'm thirteen again and we are in that glass room where the world outside of it keeps going rather fast, everything moves fast around us but we don't. We are inside the room, the seconds go by slow and it's then when I can take a breath, with him I can finally breathe.

The world didn't shut up when I was with Tristan, with him everything kept by going fast and loudly, there was noise but I never cared, with him I wanted to scream louder. With Tristan I wanted to make much more noise than the rest, I wanted everyone to hear us above all the sounds and I also breathed. There's some comfort in feeling heard, like between all the noise and fast moves, you stand out. That's how I felt with Tristan, wonderful, like a rough diamond.

And now... Now I look in the mirror wearing an extraordinary makeup I'm still trying to figure out if it's likely of the girl who flattened her ex's car tires or of the girl who followed her mother's commands as a puppy.