Not just me & you anymore (G!P)

C. 45 - Maya

Hello everyone!For now, I thank all of you for coming this far with the reading. As you know this is the last chapter, but I prefer to leave any comments from me following the epilogue. See you soon !

My hands are shaking with emotion, but I am here. I am present because I chose to be, because I needed to be. I still don't know how I will face the next steps, the ones for which I will have to use only my own strength. I sigh and feel my legs give out, but I cannot give up now.

Airports have always had a strange effect on me. If stations have that something romantic about them, airports have always seemed heartbreaking to me. They're huge spaces, with those giant runways that force you to walk miles, and the very moment the plane takes off you feel like you're already centuries away. As long as you are on that plane, as long as you are leaving for a trip everything goes smoothly. The mess forms when one flies away and the other is planted on the ground. When one puts down roots and the other puts on wings. When one leaves and the other stays.

Today the imbalance is at its highest level. There is one who stays, me as an empty vessel, and three who leave, taking away my heart, my soul, my everything.

After a week of intense talk, bitter tears, compromises, dreams, arguments and reunions, Carina and the girls are leaving today, heading for the United States. It is ironic fate: there was a time where I bought a one-way ticket in the opposite direction, with the only money I had managed to save, without even allowing myself to dream of the happiness I met today. Yet this same happiness today takes a plane in the opposite direction from me, traveling to what I once called home and today seems like the worst of nightmares.

Nothing we experienced this week was easy. We had to find ways to communicate it to my mother, to our friends, and especially to Viviana. My heart broke every time her little minds struggled to understand logically what was happening, and it broke even more every time tears streaked her face and she begged me to do something. Yet there was nothing I could do. And deep down, there was nothing I wanted to do either: I love Carina so much that any dream of hers I wish could be attainable, even if it means taking something away from me. Of course, I never imagined I would have to give up so much. Even now I am not sure if Viviana really understands what is going on: for the last few hours as a kind of mantra we have been telling her that she will have a new home, in a new city, in a new state, with a new language and a new school where she can learn the same things she would have learned here. We explained to her that this is a temporary solution and that sooner than she thought, she would be back here and we would all be happy again. But I don't think the repetition of the mantra has borne fruit. Not yet at least.

The "easy" part about separating myself from Viviana is that I have a need, almost an obligation, to show myself somehow strong: I have never hidden my feelings of sadness and pain, but I have also never been able to break down completely in front of her. Viviana needed me to explain, to be rational, to be present. In her own way the same happened with Celeste. There is no reciprocity of dialogue, but I still understood that I could not melt completely in front of her, that it was not right to crush her in my arms crying with sobs because she would only get scared. So I made my love for my daughters the glue that held me together during these heartbreaking moments.

None of this was true, however, as we spent our last night together with Carina last night. I spent the whole evening trying to show myself strong, putting both girls to bed, telling stories, trying to laugh, filling them with kisses and hugs. The cuddles with Viviana lasted much longer than usual and I waited even while they slept, trying to leave them as serenely as possible. All to disintegrate into a sobbing fit as soon as I walked through my bedroom door and threw myself forcefully onto the bed. "How can I really expect to survive without all this?" I asked myself. However, my gaze then crossed Carina's and she smiled at me, with the same love, strength and boundless passion with which she is looking at me now and I understood.