What He Made Me

Chapter 14 - Mine

Chapter 14 - Mine. 

I don’t know how long I sat on that bed completely dumbfounded. Every now and again I would feel Dante’s presence within my mind; his thoughts would slip into my head briefly before vanishing again.

He’s checking up on you.

That love sick teen informed me, and I guess I should know this. He loves me. I hardly even know this man and he’s in love with me. It’s such an utterly impossible situation, and I really don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what I’m meant to be doing now, how I’m supposed to react to all this personal information he’s given me. He said he’d give me time, but I don’t even know where to start in assessing all this.

I fall back on the bed with a thump and stare straight up at the ceiling. This would all be so much easier if I loved him too. But that’s the problem really, I don’t love, I don’t allow myself to fall into such obscenities. It only leads to hurt. I don’t let people in, I don’t trust in people, I don’t hope for the best and I don’t go about things thinking that everything happens for a reason.

Because, it’s all a lie, it’s all false. I’ve learned this over my short 18 years, and I’ve learned it well. I’ve drilled it into myself so firmly, watching the world around me. Watching people break-up and make-up, watching the secrets and the false hope. Watching as they all trick themselves into believing that everything will be okay in the end.

It took 5 years for me to let Hayley and John in, and even then, they’ve never seen the real me; the scared, confused girl behind the mask. The girl who just tries and tries to keep her head up high, the tears back and the smile upon her face. The girl who just tries to get by a day at a time. She doesn’t fall for the lies; she doesn’t fall for the tricks of life around her. She knows the truth.

I know the facts, I know it’s all lies; all the bull crap they try to fed us. Things don’t happen for a reason; they’re all just grasping for ways to make sense of the chaos around us. They’re giving meaning to things that have no meaning. They’re clinging to hope so hard that they forget about reality. Nothing’s meant to be. We’re all just lost souls wondering endlessly, but they desperately seek comfort from the notion that things will work out in the end no matter what. They’ve tricked themselves into believing that everything will be okay in the end just so they don’t have to face the reality that maybe it won’t.

Riley and I, we knew this. We knew the truth of the world around us. Life is what you make it. We didn’t hold on to false hope that things will all work out, we make sure it does. We pushed on through life, facing reality with a cold shoulder. Always looking to each other when times got hard, not hope or trust in something false or that stupid notion that everything will work out. No, we looked to our sides and found each other, standing there with our strong faces on, braving it and showing the world no weakness.

This was the truth. Trust leads to hurt. Hope is false. Things don’t happen for a reason, and not everything will work out in the end.

If you want that happy ending, you have to work for it. If things fall apart; you haven’t tried hard enough.

Riley’s death wasn’t ‘meant to be’. It wasn’t a step to ensure the future; it didn’t happen for a reason. It happened because I didn’t try hard enough. I drove that car of the cliff; because I lost control and I wasn’t strong enough, not skilled enough behind the wheel, to bring it back safely onto the road.

And, that is the truth of the world.

I sit upright in bed, putting my mask back in place. I will solider on through whatever needs to be done here, I will work hard and get to where I want to be. Where ever that may be.