Taming Life

Mixed Messages

I couldn't sleep that night. I kept tossing and turning and crying. And everything was running through my mind, over and over and over again. Was I too harsh on her? Did she really love me at all? Or was she just playing around because she could, burying me as soon as she got the chance to? Was this just a game to her? I didn't know. And it was killing me.

I had more messages from Alex. I turned my phone on at 3am. I was trying to think of what she could have said, and in the end my curiosity got the better of me.

But I am sorry though.

Hazel you've got to believe me.

You're my everything and I just miss you.

Please let me prove myself to you.

Please.

I will do anything.

I was so close to throwing my phone at the wall, and I took a shaky breath, with it poised and aimed at the wall, and let it fall from my hand onto the floor. I then buried my face in my pillow, crying. If she'd do anything, then why did she do this in the first place? If she missed me so much, then why wasn't she trying harder?

Because she didn't care.

And then it dawned on me. This was exactly what she'd done before. Regardless of whether she loved me or not, which heartbreakingly I was entirely unsure of, she didn't care when she was in public. She'd agreed with her friend before and hurt me, and now she'd taken it to the next level. She'd done what she promised she never would. And it hurt. She didn't care because she was fine. She got herself out of any issues. I was the one who was stuck failing at trying to hold my broken pieces together as more and more people tried to break me further.

I left the house early the next morning. I would rather sit in the library and read on my own than see Alex. I couldn't, I knew that just looking at her would make me cry. It would make me break, and I was already broken to the point where I was scared I'd never be fixed.

All the way to school I kept reading through those messages, over and over. Did she mean it? I bit my lip. I knew I was going over the same things over and over, but I couldn't help it. Nothing could make me stop.

I was happy to be in the library. It was quiet, and reading made me escape to another world. Any world was better than my own right now.

"Oh hey Hazel! You're here early too?" Lily said as I took a book off the shelf, making me jump. I thought I'd been alone here.

"Um yeah, I am. But I'll stay out of your way, it's fine." I said, looking at the ground. I knew that she'd probably feel the same as everyone else and I'd rather avoid an awkward situation. Maths could be awful from now on, but I was used to being disliked. It had happened many, many times before. This was just a different level of it. And I'd been considering me and Lily friends up until now. Distancing myself from people would have been a much better way to spend my time. I'd be less hurt now, and I wouldn't hurt anyone around me either. I wouldn't be this virus anymore.

"Don't. I've heard everything that's happened, and quite frankly the truth is between you and Alex. The rumours won't be entirely true; you'd have to be an idiot to think that they were. But I'm not the kind of person who stops being friends with people just because of rumours. That's not who I am. And I meant what I said about you coming over and seeing the puppy. You should, seriously." Lily said.

"I'd like to. And thank you. Everyone's been saying things....I just didn't know how you felt. I hoped you didn't mind." I said.

"It's okay, I get that. I'm not like that though. I want you to be okay." She said.