"It gets easier, doesn't it..?" she said glancing up, as if the heavens would offer her some sort of significant reply. A drop tapped down onto the captured memory she had been staring at for over 10 minutes. Forgotten in the recesses of her notebook pages, it had dislodged itself and patiently lay at the bottom of her bag undiscovered for over a month, as if deliberately waiting for this moment - a pre-meditated undertaking to shake the ground she had come to believe had steadied.
The life that-no-longer-was stared up at her from her hand. The keys she had fumbled for clinked as she let her bag slide down her shoulder.
She had smiled for a brief second warmed by the sudden knocking of the past, then released a long cathartic sigh. "Well, if it doesn't rain it pours!" She chuckled to herself, her amusement at the irony of the universe began to wear off as the weight of all that had been suddenly revealed its unsolicited magnitude.Drizzle began to collect on the old photograph, again she looked up into the immense grey which now seemed to surround her, "Really!!" She retorted, the picture's dampened edges had now begun to stick to her fingers.
She stared a little more intently at the last remnants of what had been; she felt her heart twinge, and the dormant ache at the pit of her stomach began to gurgle. She looked up again, this time fighting back the drizzle that was building up in her own eyes. "Come on Ry! Pull yourself towards yourself!" She reprimanded herself, trying to fight back the emotions that seemed to be erupting from her core."Why, today!" she sighed. The picture suddenly felt like a free weight in her hand. She knew it, all of it...just like that, it was all back: the an untold truth she had innately known. It had manipulated by hope, just a tiny speck had pushed it's way through the canopy of doubt and pain that shaded her even still. All this in on little picture — a lasting reminder of failed promises and delusional dreams which now lay all but abandoned and desolate. Her past self stared up at her accusingly, "The poster child for failed relationships," she rolled her eyes as the heavy words escaped her lips. She felt this one had been different — or rather yet she knew she had wanted to feel such. "You, love toying with me don't you!" She retorted looking up again at the greyed sky.
For the last couple of months she had felt universally targeted — if it was gonna happen it would happen to her, "The facedown buttered toasts chronicles," she mumbled as she chuckled — the irony overwhelming her. "Could start a column with all the drama I've endured of late." Her eyes swelled further, she wiped away the spots of drizzle from her cheeks, and loosened the scarf around her neck in an attempt to gain some air. She felt constricted by the sudden assault of her memory, the photograph stood as a beacon of her failure to make a success of what, everybody else knew, was doomed to fail.
"Ghaah! How could I have been so blinded?"
Her irritation and anger began to grow as her vulnerabilities revealed themselves again. She felt ill as the serrations of pain began to stimulate the gurgling in the pit of her stomach.It all seemed so feeble now, so juvenile, but there was nothing weak about its hold over her. The charred remnants of the flame that once burned still smouldered within; the plumes of smoke, which had clouded her mind, had risen up from the emotional embers of a love that had been snuffed out by fear and self indulgence, had, only now, begun to turn to ash.
She hated how blemished she felt, as if people could see right through her...as if the "scorched lover's" smokey stench clung to her and all her emotions, tarnishing them in morbid black soot which seemed to permeate into everything she tried to occupy her mind with. She couldn't understand why, "Why all the rouse - it couldn't all have been a lie?" The drizzle in her eyes, reach capacity and the downpour streamed forth.
"Was he really that selfish? How could I have been that stupid!"
Then reckless abandonment had been so unlike her, "Had he seen me...?" she thought. The unanswerable questions seemed endless like a gyre of thoughts swirling around. Trapped in an air-tight facade; she had kept it at bay by willing herself to return to some form of lonely, empty routine. She had tried keeping her distance to make it seem as if life was all "dandy," creating a lie to hide all the pain. Yet, no matter how hard she tried, it never seemed to leave, only to multiply.
The haunting smoke seemed to billow around in her facade, but the cracks had finally begun to show and it was time for her to let it all go. She had inherently known this fact for months, but accepting it had felt like taking the life of something that had yet been allowed to breath. It pained her knowing that, but it pained her more having to accept it. She pulled her hair out of her face, her fingers trembled as the strands of hair moved through them.
YOU ARE READING
Ineffable
Short StoryEver experienced that moment of clarity - when the universe seems to align with both your subconscious and conscious desires... for Ryan this moment came all at once when she least expected it...