Forked Roads Back

49 - TESSA

THESE LAST TWO YEARS had been busy. But busy was good, because it kept my mind off huge, important things.

Huge, important things like graduating. Like moving back home. Like moving in with Jamie. It's all starting to terrify me, because we were now only a few weeks from the end of term, and that meant I was running out of time to put them off. It was also scaring me how these decisions were not far off anymore; they were here and now.

But what scares me most is how ready Jamie seems to be. He seems to be several steps ahead and, in his mind, I feel like we have already graduated. He may not be admitting this to me, or maybe I'm just being overly sensitive, but I'd seen  the tabs on his computer, which had searches for flats in Canary Wharf. I was excited for him to have landed his dream job, and to have a job already lined up for when we graduated, but on the few I had seen him looking at, it made a hole in my stomach.

I was in no financial state to move in with him yet, especially not if he was expecting me to cover half the rent in one of those expensive tower blocks. I want to live  with him, of course I do, but I want to be able to pay my own way, not live off him. However, what this year had prepared me for, was how amazing it was to actually live with him, and when I was ready - when we were both ready - I knew it would be amazing.

But there was other shit I had to work out first, shit that I had been tucking away into the proverbial drawer to think about later. However, now it is getting harder and harder to close that drawer these days, helping them escape into the forefront of my mind, making me worry even more.

It was Archie, and now that Jamie well and truly knew about him, I feel like I'm trapped between a rock and a hard place... and it's awful. I told him the truth about what happened a couple of summers ago, about seeing Archie in  the church, and that made his tolerance of any mention of plummet.

It was unsurprising really. Before I told him, Archie had been this imaginary problem; someone who was unlikely to come back and cause any trouble. But now, because he had been home, and because I had seen him, he sees red whenever anybody mentions him. Of course, this doesn't help me when dealing with my Archie issues, and I know he is going to have an absolute fit when I tell him what I need to do to be able properly move on.

I'm trying to do my best at supressing what feelings that have started to bubble up, trying my hardest to focus on the wonderful man I have, but sometimes I can't help but think about the guy that ran away. It's making me realise that, now more than ever, I need to talk to Archie, I need to see him, and not just from afar. I needed to speak to him, to get everything off my chest, because I felt like my head would quite literally explode.

I am starting this next chapter of my life. I want to move on, but he's always there, stopping me. He's like a ball and chain, permanently trapped around my ankle, and if I wasn't careful, that ball and chain would pull me over the edge and underneath the water.

Because I really am being dragged under, and it's not just me who has to bear it, but Jamie as well, and it's really not fair to him to have to deal with this on top of everything else.

As if it wasn't bad enough to control in the day, it is now starting to affect how I sleep. And that, with me being asleep and not able to control it, is what is hurting Jamie the most.

A few months ago, I woke in the middle of the night  to find Jamie gone. Figuring he had gone down to get a glass of water, I went down to join him, only to find him sitting on the step outside our room, staring blankly at the wall ahead of him. Naturally I asked what was wrong, hoping I could help, but I would never expected him to say what he said was the problem, not in a million years, and I definitely would never have expected it to be me that was the problem.