All Too Well - Erik Menendez

After Losing You, I'm Missing Pieces Of Myself That I Won't Find Again.

Princeton. NJ. 1988.

Eriks POV:

The trip down to Princeton is one met with excitement and uneasiness. It will be my first time seeing Lyle in almost seven months.
I feel his energy beckoning me forward as every second passes. The nervousness to see my brother is beyond belief - beyond what I thought was in the realms of possibility after everything.

I secretly started to wait outside on mail days, making sure to take Lyles letters before my father could even notice any were sent. It started about three months ago, so we've been writing back and forth in secret, completely under the nose of my father. Every letter carefully stuffed in a childhood teddy bear that inhabits the area behind my desk.

Almost straight away Lyle hatched the plan; I was to drive down to Princeton this week because Dad and Mom are away for a business trip in NYC, leaving me to be the sole inhibitor of the house.
Paranoia wants to suggest my father suspected of our plan; the way I received a lecture about the fact I better be there when he gets back.
However, Lyle believes I'm just being paranoid. After all, we have been so secretive, so careful.

December has currently infiltrated the earth, the slight frost nips and tugs under the early-morning guise, only to be replaced with heaps of wet waterfalls that stream from the dark blue skies.
The weather doesn't know what to do, December doesn't know what it wants, just like me.

I frustratingly turn the volume off on my radio as another love-induced hit floods through the speakers. The music travels through a hollow part of me that trembles in emptiness.
Whisper. My hollowness.
I am yet to inform Lyle about what happened between Whisper and I, or, what I did to Whisper.
In fact, I'm terrified to do so. Not only because reliving the shameful reality of my actions and the demise it led to is becoming more and more unbearable, but because I know how furious he will be. How disappointed he will be. He'll kill me.

Since school started again, any progress I clawed at over the summer was gone. It broke the first day back when I saw her making use of her boyfriend's lips before second period.
I've seen it before, the sting getting progressively worse every time I've witnessed it. But I can't help but notice how much happier she looks now. Now the toxic poison that is myself is absent from her life.

Me? I'm broken, freshly torn and raw, as if everything happened only yesterday.

I intake a sharp breathe, un-hunching my shoulders and rolling them frequently, biting down on my bottom lip to halt any tears that challenge to fall.

Over the summer, I started seeing Dr. Oziel again.  Well, it was technically forced by my father after he found me with mom's medication that day, he was persistent I needed to stop with this "ungrateful and unnecessary behaviour" I adopted. So once a week, he booked me in with that shrink. An odd guy, but after building rapport after the Calabasis incidents, it's fairly easy to talk to him about certain things. Our sessions are strictly filled with me over-indulging myself in the memories of Whisper, and the pain that has come from losing her. Of course, I'd never share with him the details of what happened as I wouldn't be surprised if he supplies my parents with vigorous after-session updates.

Life after Whisper is just that; after. I have to accept how it is. I have to accept I hurt my Juliet. I have myself strictly to blame, and I will forever live in my own torment as punishment for my despicable choices that I made that harrowing week. I am Heathcliff, mourning the loss of Catherine in Brontës unforgiving depression.

As I just exit Trenton, I don't realise my unforsaken habit is in full force until I feel the warm streaking of blood trickle down my finger. I remove my finger from my mouth, wiping off the red streaks with a tissue in my side compartment.