A War On Her World | TWD: D. Dixon

Ch. 4

After the accident, Elizabeth continued with her studies for quite a while, however, it all got a bit much with the increasing loneliness. She had many friends, having been the more outgoing type who loved to have a good time, but that changed after her parents passed. With them gone, she now had no family left in the area, making it hard for her to feel like she belonged anywhere, let alone there.

This led her to the conclusion that dropping out was the only answer. Unfortunately, instead of magically fixing all of her problems, all it amounted to was further isolation as she stopped contacting those around her.

And things only spiralled from there. She stopped leaving the house, stopped looking after herself -stopped functioning. Elizabeth's whole world became smaller and smaller -more insignificant and meaningless until there was little reason left for her to exist.

It was the 29th of June, nearly half a year since the accident and nearly 5 months since she buried her parents. She was breaking, crumbling, falling apart, and she couldn't stop herself. There was nothing left for her, and the realisation manifested in the form of thrown objects. Anything and everything she could get her hands on, items from her dresser and her drawers, all of it was propelled across the room.

She screamed with a tear-stained face, each trail paving the way for the next set of oncoming sobs. Every emotion she was feeling and had ever felt since the accident finally burst from the seams, spilling over in the form of unadulterated rage. All the feelings she had bottled could no longer be contained. For what felt like hours, that's all she did, it's all she could do until something gave way for another.

And eventually, something did.

Elizabeth collapsed down in the mess she created with her clothes, books and jewellery. Small shards of gemmed necklaces sparkled from where they lay scattered around, almost creating a kind of cruel aesthetic look to the chaos. That didn't stop Elizabeth, though. She just sat there on her knees with her head held tightly in her hands, trembling as sobs wracked her body.

She gasped for breath -short and ragged. A small photo frame lay veiled underneath a pile of tossed objects, she spotted it by the one visible corner that displayed the legs of a woman in a bright sundress.

The woman rubbed her nose with a sniffle and crawled toward the pile of discarded clothes on the other side of the room. She hunched over it and weakly pulled the items off of the medium frame, noticing a crack webbing from the top left corner across and down the display glass. Picking it up gently, she traced the cracks with her pointer finger in a continuous pattern, leaving tiny cuts on the pad of her fingertip.

The photo was of her when she was young, standing in front of her parents and grandparents. In the photo, young Elizabeth was standing in front of her grandfather, holding his hands as they were slung over her shoulders. Everyone was wearing large smiles, looking genuinely happy as if nothing else in the world was wrong.

Since then her grandfather had passed, followed by her parents a few years after. She couldn't help but remember the memory of her time there when she was twelve; it was her first vacation in America, and to that day, it was still her favourite.

The memories flowed through Elizabeth's head like a delicate breeze, whisking away most of her pent up stress, the smiling faces of the past having a soothing effect on her. While still amongst the evidence of her breakdown, a sense of clarity she hadn't felt in a long time washed over her, taking with it some of her shadows. For the first time in so long, her mind had cleared just enough for her to make a life altering decision.

She came to the conclusion that she wanted to be happy.

She may have been grieving still, her life feeling permanently shrouded in a dark cloud, however, She decided to believe that happiness was as much a choice as it was a feeling. That is why, regardless of whether the idea was rational or not, Elizabeth decided she was going to leave her home in Australia for a memory, a feeling she held in America.