HAVEN BLACK - complete

THE MONTHS OF AGONY

Chapter 23 – THE MONTHS OF AGONY

The wet drive home from my mother's funeral in her old Toyota was reckless; the car's tires were bald; the wind screen wipers were ineffective; and the brakes barely functioned. Not only that, I drove with a blinding anger. Almost clipping a couple of parked vehicles down my street, I pulled the car roughly up my driveway; pressing hard down on the brake pedal, I stopped only inches from the garage door.

"Ah, fuck it," I muttered to myself deciding not to park the already soaking wet and rusty Toyota into the garage. It seemed like way too much effort to open the garage door in the rain.

Instead, I got out of the car and ran inside, not bothering to lock the piece of junk up.

The interior of the house felt damned and desolately cold as I stepped through the front door and froze in thought, the only sound my ears could pick up, other than the usual ringing, was the whirring and grinding from the fridge's compressor.

Now what?

The last three nights worth of dinner dishes were piled up on the coffee table in the lounge and an overflowing basket of dirty laundry sat on the floor.

I can't face this right now.

Defeated and exhausted from my mom's funeral service, I headed upstairs to my room, sat in front of the computer screen and logged into Facebook to check if there had been any activity on Jill's page. It'd been days – yet still no word from her.

God! We left on such bad terms.

Slumped over in my chair, I started a new composition, and within a couple of hours and a bag of chips later, I had finished it. Playing it back to myself for the first time in its entirety, I realized that it was chasm-deep in despair and much darker than I had anticipated.

Anyone that hears this song will immediately fall sick with depression.

And with this thought, I moved the music file, named "Jill and I, Forever and Eternity", into the recycling bin and surrendered for the day, collapsing onto my bed and falling into a longingly tearful sleep.

Month 1 –

...Nothing from Jill...

...Nothing at all...

No reply from Facebook, twitter or text. I yearned to hear her angelic voice again, even if it was just for a few – precious – seconds.

This month disappeared slowly and painfully. Most of the hours were dwindled away either watching horror movies or sobbing from withdrawals and loneliness. I couldn't even hang out with my only friend Andy – he was on his annual family vacation at the lake (he had text me and suggested I drive up to the lake cabin but it was too far away and I doubted my mom's old Toyota would even make it there before breaking down), and there was no one else, absolutely no one. I was completely alone.

Only the bare minimum of house chores had been done, and so far, the only changes I'd noticed from not doing them was the layer of dirt and fluff that had started to accumulate on the carpet, the scarcity of clean dishes and the empty fridge.

I was yet to look into the financial side of things as it seemed to be too much of a mountain to climb at this stage and partly because I knew, but didn't want my fears confirmed, that we'd taken a hit from having the in-home nurses stay with us for the last 6 months.

Living day by day was getting me through for now, but only just; bleak, subtle thoughts were now validating that I had started a path down a dark spiral of depression.

Month 2 –

Still nothing from Jill and it's making me increasingly angry and resentful of myself because of how I reacted over the Prom weekend, but I tried to tell myself that she's not contacting me because she has no technological means to, not because she doesn't want to talk to me – but this mentally waned in a growing disbelief and my uncertainty arose. My only reassurance was the absence of posts on her Facebook page, but this was also one of my anxieties.