Yours Truly ❁ n.k.h

• chapter fifteen •

It was so difficult to keep my feelings at bay and still be professional with Dinah around me.

Everything about her was so familiar. I mean, it had to be. For the past almost ten years, she was my definition of home. If it weren't for the circumstances, I'd be itching to reach out and kiss her. It was so hard not to. Breakup or not, when you've been with someone for so long, that feeling of closeness doesn't just go away.

When I think back to my own feelings about love and not knowing one that didn't hurt, I think I found the best and the worst of me in what I had with Dinah.

But it was clear that she didn't think the same. The love of my life looked at me as if I was a stranger. I knew it had nothing to do with my looks and all to do with my demeanor.

I'd grown into someone I didn't even recognize over the past month. I've never had so many nightmares or anxiety attacks in my life. Despite creating an environment that filled itself with peace, my head was a war zone and I couldn't tell which soldiers were the good or bad guys.

Sometimes I fear that I'm creating this self fulfilling prophecy by choosing to live in my head all the time. But it's safer here. I know that in my head at least, I can't hurt anyone but myself. And as long as I'm hurting myself, everyone else doesn't have a reason to hate me because it isn't affecting them.

Being on thin ice with Dinah was a phenomena that I wasn't really used to though. Sure, there were times when she'd be upset with me. But things were never pushed to this degree. In all of our eight years, we never had a break up.

I drew a hand over my face to blur my tears. In truth, I wanted nothing more than to peel my face off, fuck the tears. Disappointment, desperation, anger, these emotions were nothing. They paled in comparison to heartbreak.

And there's no shitty sentiment here of feeling like my heart is in pieces.

Instead it just feels like the last corner of a rug that I was on was ripped from underneath me.

There was no safety net of a dynamic to fall back on.

It's weird to be so... aware of all that is happening around you and the deeper meaning to it without really grasping how you play a part in it. Because the thing with life is you watch things happen to other people, and in that, you learn human nature. But then you, as a human, are also forced to experience and feel things as you witness others do the same.

When the accident happened, I didn't have the same reaction as everyone else. Like I was also in the car and was a witness to everything, but I didn't have an injury. In a weird way, it made me feel so separated from the experience as a whole. Everything that was happening, technically wasn't happening to me. I was just experiencing human nature so to speak.

Then came the added layer of who the accident revolved around - and that's when I began to feel pain on an entirely new level.

It was the most useless I'd ever felt as a parent. It's never easy to watch a kid go through hell and have no way of pulling them out. Especially when they're your own.

As I sat in the emergency room that night, all I kept thinking was that there was really no point to me being there. I was there for moral support for my child, yes. But if I drove the car, if I didn't get hurt, and I couldn't take back the things that happened and change Angel's fate, then what good could I do sticking around?