kiwi || h.s [edited]

Chapter Twenty One

There is nothing half as sweet or comforting as returning home. A place you know where you're loved and cared for. I was well aware that this was not a universal sentiment and that I should be far more grateful that I had been afforded such luck. I felt incredibly closer to Harry and I even after our flight home I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day in his company, but I knew that I needed to talk to my family. I had been harbouring this burden for too long and I knew they deserved to understand and know exactly all that had happened.

I knew that this wasn't going to be an easy feat, but it was a necessary one.

So, with tears, my mother's and my own, I told them the good, the bad and the horrific. I started with the impromptu decision to move to New York and how I had never been so happy to be in such a busy city with the love of my life and how we had incredible friends. Then I told them about the night that everything changed. The night that Andrew was killed and the night that I was raped. I told them about how long and insufferable it was to go the process of accusing John of murdering the love of my life. How awful it was to find out that Andrew would never be avenged because John had taken it upon himself to remove himself from this world. There were many heavy pauses and deep breaths but when I had finally stopped talking, Something within me shifted. Something felt lighter, as if someone had thrown open the windows in an abandoned home. Allowing a wash of fresh air and light to flow in.

It was a lot for my family to take in, understandably, but they took me in with open arms and we sat in the tension of the revelation. We sat in the tension of pain and we sat in the tension of having lost each other in all the time that had passed.

The next day I gathered a few belongings and placed them into a box. Some were rather difficult to part with but in order to allow myself to move on from a love I once had, I knew it was necessary. I will spend a long time grieving for a life I would never get to live with Andrew but wishing for the past to be different was painful and wishing that the future would be different was pointless. Life is what it is and we hurt ourselves trying to see it as anything else.

Across the, now sealed, box I took the only marker I could find in the entire house and wrote his initials. A.W. I went to the attic and placed the hefty box amongst other things from my past. Things from my childhood. From my horrid teenage years and from my baby years. Once I allowed myself to leave the stuffy attic, I decided to journal.

Dear Andrew

This will be my last entry. I love you and I will never love another man like you. And that's alright, because our world is vast. Filled with so much love but never the same. And love is unique in its own right and for that I am entirely grateful.

You are and will always be a part of me, but I need to put this 'almost' behind me. You have taught me many things that I will take with me for the rest of my life. The most important of them all is that when you love someone, tell them. Tell those you love that you love them. It may be premature, or it may be long overdue but do it because you never truly know how much time you have left with those people.

So, in summation, I just want to say...

I love you and goodbye.

Amelia