Roommates with Benefits [18+ only]

42. The hardest part of ending

TARA

The first thing I heard when I woke up, was the front door being closed. It was barely 4 am. I knew that because I kept on waking up every 30 minutes. My mind just didn't want to hear it of giving me a break, it kept on running rampant while I was awake, and it still worked overtime by manifesting its restlessness in my dreams. To top it all off, finding the right position to sleep without hurting my injured shoulder seemed almost impossible, as the recurring pain proved.

I decided to get up and do something useful instead, such as rereading my speech-to-text notes or trying to take notes that way for my thesis. It did work, be it only because my academic career is the one thing that keeps me laser-focused.

At some point I fell into my regular habits during finals, made of waking up at 4 am and remaining in the kitchen studying until lunch time, drinking one tea after the other. The difference was, this time I spent only 3 hours doing that, because by 7 am, as usual, Lukas came back from his jog. Ashamedly, I scuttled out of the kitchen as soon as I heard the front door being unlocked.

He kind of forced my hand last night. I'm not even sure I meant all those things, but I had no other choice. I had to make sure he knew the kiss with Sheila didn't bother me. I know very well that it should indeed not bother me, but there's a whole deep ocean between what should be and what actually is. For instance, I shouldn't have let Sheila's words get to me, and yet they did.

She's one side of my life that I need to fix. And when I say fix, I mean it's in or out. The way she spoke to me the past few days, I don't know whether it's because I'm not the same Tara I used to be, or simply because her attacks were more direct, but I realized that it wasn't new. She's undermined my confidence, my whole being, in ways that only now I can see. The question is, was it on purpose?

If it was, I have no room for such a person in my life anymore, unless she shows remorse and actively works to rekindle our friendship. If it wasn't intentional, I am keener on forgiving and forgetting, but I need proof of loyalty. I need to know where she stands. I said I needed to work on myself before getting into a new relationship ... well, part of that journey is freeing myself of all toxicity. That might or might not include the person I've been calling best friend all this time, yes.

It's something Leo told me the other night, even though right then I couldn't quite focus on it. He simply reminded me of what my beloved Linkin Park said: the hardest part of ending, is starting again. Well, at first, he talked about how life is in constant motion, mentioning the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but when he noticed I got lost at the sole mention of physics, he moved on to more pop culture references, until he landed on Linkin Park when he noticed my keychain, which had their logo (plus of course, the Deathly Hallows symbol as well as a small stuffed wolf and a Tour Eiffel my sister got me when she went to Paris with the school).

The hardest part of ending is starting again. I kept on telling myself when I couldn't sleep. As hard as it may be to move on, sometimes it's necessary. In the words of Toni Morrison: if you wanna fly, you gotta give up the shit that weighs you down. That's the path I'm starting, and if Sheila is one of those things that weigh me down, then regrettably, we're done.

Part of me still hopes we can fix everything. Part of me still wants to believe she came here for me, because she missed me, her words were only her way of being there for me. But Lukas proved me that when you care about someone you can roast them jokingly, but you'll never cross the line between a joke and an insult.

In light of that, many of the things Sheila has said to me, back in the day as well as the last couple of days, felt way too aimed at insulting to be some form of cold, aloof way of caring, as I always thought it was.