Meant To Be

One More Weekend

'Cause girl, I watched your heart break 

There's only so much more of this that I can take 

All I wanna do is put you back together 

And see you smile again 

Yeah, I wanna see you smile again

 - Smile Again, from FOUR's first album Nights Like These 

In my dreams, nothing's ever this... much.

I'm aware that doesn't make very much sense. Bear with me. I am a writer, after all - you'll have to excuse me my flights of fancy.

But in my dreams, there's always this layer between me and everything that's happening. There's always this ability to just - be. To do whatever it is I'm doing.

Maybe thats why I'm never scared in my dreams. Maybe that's why it seems so much easier to achieve - well, my dreams. (in my dreams, hah.)

It's that third-person sort of feeling, even if that specific dream isn't in third person. (And yes, some of them are.)

Anyway, the point is - and yes, there was a point, somewhere back there - the point is, I'm sort of feeling that right now.

I don't think that's necessarily a good thing.

It's a slow process, the art of coming back to myself. The exhaustion, the jet-lag fever, is just a part of it. The other part is the misguided belief that if I bury myself deep enough in my brain, it won't hurt as much. I won't be back here, with Holland so impossibly far away.

Except now, I'm standing at the front door, staring blankly at my key in my hand and trying to remember what it's for.

That's just the start of a very long couple of days.

I go to class. I go home. I write.

I couldn't tell you what I'm writing about, but I get 95 percent on a poetry assignment and wonder blindly if this is how all poets felt all the time. Like you're feeling so much that you can't even feel it anymore but at the same time it's right there to tap into whenever you need it.

I make food - or try to, until my kitchen privileges are suspended after Soph finds me standing in front of a burning pan, staring blankly out the window. After that, someone makes food for me, or I order takeout.

Holland calls me, that night. I try to put on a brave face for him, but I don't think it's working. I can't decide if it's a consolation or not that he sounds just as miserable as I am.

"How are you, love," he says. "Really."

"Okay," I say, trying my best to hide the slight waver in my voice. Short answers are the safest, but I'm nearly a hundred percent sure that Holland sees right through my act.

"I miss you," he says, right before we hang up. "And I'm sorry it sucks right now, but we're gonna figure this out. We're gonna find a way to make this work."

I don't say anything in response.

I don't know what to say.

There's a part of me that hates this, this Bella Swan act I'm going through, but it's not just that. It's not just Holland.

It's everything. It's the jet lag. It's the impossibility of it all. It's the next three years of my degree looming ahead of me, incomprehensibly long, even though this is what I want. It's all the bills and the student loans and the fact that I don't really know who I am, outside of school.