Written With Hearts

Written With Hearts - Chapter Twenty Five

Abby....

With Yate between my knees and my cheeks between his hands, I try to find the words to explain all of my tears. If only he hadn't found me crying beside Lily. If only I hadn't been consumed with overwhelming emotion. If only my past didn't have the power to strike me down with such crippling sadness, whenever it fucking well felt like it. If onlys scream at me, over and over, as I silently try to find the right words to say. I honestly don't know what happened. One minute I was singing Lily the beautiful lullaby that my nan used to sing me, the next, I am hit with a massive wave of unstoppable sadness. It just came out of nowhere. It completely caught me unaware. I remember sitting there, tucking Lily in, and just looking at her; thinking how beautifully peaceful she looked as she quietly slept. That's when the emotional wave hit, causing absolute chaos within me. I had started thinking about the abortion. Imagining that my own baby could have been just like Lily, angelically sleeping. I felt morosely guilty, because my child should have been sung that lullaby, over and over. I was then reminded of Lily's adorable and innocent laughter, and I suddenly became suffocated with the knowledge that I'd never hear my baby laugh like that. That's when my past wiped out all of the happiness of our wonderful day out together. In one devastating and crashing wave, it desecrated all of the happiness that I'd shared with Yate and Lily.

I was happy, truly happy.

The reason for that happiness?

I have fallen hopelessly in love with Yate.

Watching him as he gently brushed Lily's hair after her bath already had me beginning to fall. But when he began singing, Baa Baa Black Sheep, it became a done deal. My bursting with love heart felt so ready to commit itself to him, because it had finally admitted its love to me. I realised that the truest of beautiful love can still exist in an ugly world. Before Yate, my world was despairingly ugly. Maybe that ugliness was the real reason why I began writing in the first place, trying to fill my life with some much-needed beauty? It may have only been fictional beauty, but it was still beauty that lightened my dark and shadowy world. Who truly knows? All I do know is that Yate has given my hollow heart some true meaning. Which is why I need to open up to him. He needs to know everything about me. I need to know whether once he has the truth, he can really love a person like me. Now is the time to find out.

Summoning what little emotional strength I have left, I affectionately place my hands on top of his; the ones that still remain gently on my damp cheeks. "I don't really know where to begin," I admit with a stooped shrug, briefly looking down at my lap before forcing myself to look back at Yate.

He offers to me a kind and patient smile. "From the beginning?" he asks with his eyes widening with expectancy.

I nod gently, pulling his hands away from my face because I need the space to think for a moment. Just tell the truth. Every ugly part of it. Just tell the truth. I silently spur myself on, ready to lay myself down into the sacrificial lap of Yate Sheridan. With a surrendering sigh, I quietly begin. "I didn't have the most conventional of upbringings. I was the result of an affair between my mother and father. I grew up forever on the outskirts of my dad's life. Everyone knew that I was his daughter; I just wasn't allowed to be one. He had his wife and his other daughter. I was never accepted as part of their family, because I guess, I was a constant reminder of my dad's dirty betrayal. So whilst my dad played happy family with his wife, my mum was drinking herself into rejected oblivion. I was practically brought up by my grandparents, which ended up being my only saving grace. But for all of that saving grace, I still felt unwanted. I still felt like I was never good enough to be my dad's daughter. To always be on the outside, looking in . . . it hurt." I stop, feeling myself beginning to get upset. Yate looks hurt, on account of my pain, and is about to speak; but I stop him. "Please don't say anything yet. I just need you to listen," I say with a heaviness pulling down on my limbs. Swallowing hard, I once again begin to explain, knowing that I'm coming to the hardest part. "The truth is Yate, my parents kind of fucked me up. Emotionally, I was wired wrong. I grew up bitter, insecure, unwanted, and empty. I tried to live my life normally, convincing myself that they hadn't affected me . . . but they did. Then three years ago, my dad died. The painful part about it all, was that I didn't know anything about his death until three months after he had died." My chin begins to quiver, so I suck in a deep breath, trying to control the hurt that is slowly surfacing from within me.