The Broken Pieces Left Behind

Chapter 28

The phone rang out again with no answer and I sighed as I removed it from my ear the sound echoing loudly into the quiet. I was completely and utterly alone. Erin was avoiding me and I was avoiding everyone else. I ran my fingers through my hair, I think I may have hated myself just a little right now.

It had been a while since I went to therapy, Phillip and I had decided that I could only come in when I felt like I needed to talk to someone and that was maybe once a month, but I figured that with the upheaval that was my life right now I desperately needed a session with the mild mannered doctor.

That was why at four thirty on a Saturday afternoon I was seated in the familiar office space, picking at the lint on the fabric covered couch, watching the hands on the clock tick so slowly by that the sound seemed to echo loudly in my ears.

Phillip said nothing, waiting for me to open up. I had started to say something many times since I arrived, but the sound just died in my throat each time.

I swallowed and started again. "I broke up with Jack." He hummed his response. "And it was the right thing to do I know that it was."

"Do you? Really think that it was?"

"Yes," I answered quickly, but then I narrowed my eyes at him. "Why?"

"It sounds to me like you're trying to convince yourself."

"I'm not. Do you think that I made a mistake?"

I wasn't going to lie, what I had really come here for was validation. Validation that the decision I made was the right one. I needed him to be on my side about this whole situation because no one was.

"I'm impartial in this situation. The question is do you think that you made a mistake? I am in no way the one that has to live with the choices. So are you happy with your decision?"

Was I happy? Not really. "I don't think I made a mistake," I murmured quietly, but even I couldn't the underlying notes of doubt in my tone. "Erin does though. She's not talking to me."

"Why is that?"

"Because she thinks that I'm self-sabotaging and that I'm a coward. She won't even answer the phone when I call."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"It makes me feel sad. And angry. I mean just because she doesn't like the fact that Jack and I broke up doesn't mean that she can just cut me off like that." My voice was growing louder. "She didn't need to agree, just understand. She's supposed to be my best friend. She's supposed to understand how I feel. Instead she just fights with me and then igrone me for the entire week."

My voice cracks in anger, frustration and tiredness. Running my fingers through my hair I stand up and walk to the window, looking down at the passersby on the street. I didn't know any of them but I hoped that their lives were easier than mine had been.

"I'm angry at myself," I add quietly. "I am scared and I hate that I'm not strong enough to take a chance on the things that I want, but what if that's the only way I'm able to keep going."

"Do you think that by sacrificing the things that you love," I noted that he didn't say people, even if that is what he meant. "That your life will be better?"

I shrug and hug my arms close to my chest. "I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe it will just make me feel more miserable. I can't be with him, it felt like all of me was so wrapped up in him that if he left that I would become my mom."

I'd said the same thing to Erin.

"Is that what you're afraid of?" I turned to face him and nodded whispering a quiet yes. "Do you think that closing yourself off from feeling that you won't. Aren't you just doing the opposite of what your mother does in an attempt to not end up like her, but in the end isn't if kind of the same thing?"

"What do you mean?" the question creased between my eyebrows. How could it possibly be the same thing?

"Sara is so open to new experiences that she makes decisions based on her feelings. They may be rash and impulsive but she does them anyway. You are so afraid of your feelings that you close yourself off so you won't have to make any decisions on your feelings except one, fear. You make all your decisions based on how afraid things make you."

I stood there studying him. He was too good at reading me, or maybe it was just that I was so transparent that anyone could see how I felt, or maybe he was just that good at his job. Either way unease prickled under my skin at his acute observation of me. I didn't know if I was right, but I had made my decisions and it was too late to change them, so I'd just have to deal with it.

* * * * *

I went through the motions. Two weeks had gone by and each day had so eerily resembled the other that it had been hard to keep track of. At school I was just a sad and lonely figure that floated through the halls  like a ghost of the Becca that I had been. Erin wouldn't even look my way, her silence towards me so piercing that each time I spotted her and she looked away from me the tight grip on my heart squeezed even more.

Jack. He was an echo that I could always hear. I wasn't exactly of looking for him, but he was always there. He too wasn't looking at me, passing me in the halls as if we were strangers who had never met. It hurt, more than I expected it to. I thought I would feel light, unburdened when he wasn't there, except that was the last thing I felt. Each time I saw his oceanic eyes, or the expanse of his wide shoulders, catching a glimpse of him in the crowded halls I still felt a thrill in my heart that bled even more with the depth of my feelings.

I shouldn't have expected a reaction from him, but I stupidly wanted it. I had made my position clear when it came to us and he had made his clear, but even that didn't stop my feelings.

Sara was avoiding me. Or was I avoiding her? At this point I didn't care. She could be in the same room with me and I wouldn't notice. What I did notice however was the smell of food that hit me when I walked into the apartment that evening wanting nothing more than to sleep.

The place was oddly clean, I hadn't really been doing any household chores in days. The mess that I knew I left on the coffee table gone.

"I made us dinner," Sara said from her position behind the counter in the kitchen a large smile on her face. "Come eat."

I looked at her like she was some new specimen and I the scientist that wasn't quite sure what she was, or what to do with her.  I thought she was mad at me or something. So then why was she making me dinner? Was "Mom Sara" back with a new man to turn my life upside down again. I sighed and shook my head telling her that I wasn't hungry.

I saw her face fall a little, saw the questions that stained her lips and never quite came out, but she didn't push.

After a shower I sat on my bed and dialled Erin's number. I had lost count of the number of times that I had tried to call her, but like the other times she didn't answer. I fell back unto the bed my tears leaking out from my eyes a running coldly into my ears.

We had been in the same space all afternoon at work, but the air around us was so thick with tension and frigid air that it burned. I didn't think that it was possible for you to ignore a person in such a small space but Erin had proved that it was possible.

Not one word was said to me as she aptly applied herself to her tasks. It was as if I were invisible or maybe just an annoying speck that wasn't even worth her time. And it made me so hyper aware of her that I knew each time she took a breath with alarming intimacy.

Breaking out of my thoughts, I looked down at the mobile device just out of reach of my fingers. I picked up the phone and opened up my pictures gallery for another form of torture, one I had subjected myself through an unhealthy amount of times. A smiling Jack, pressing his chin into the crook of my shoulder stared back at me reminding me of a happier time. I pinched and opened my fingers over the screen to zoom the picture on his face in particular.

I had lied to Phillip. I think I did regret my decision a little. The only problem was, I wasn't sure I should fix it. Or even if I could fix it. I gently place the phone next to me on bed and and curled my body into a fetal position.

Neither of them wanted to see me, and I really couldn't blame them.