Forked Roads Back

35 - TESSA

I'M IN THE SAME predicament as Christmas.

I need to go home, and yet there's something stopping me.

Jamie was stopping me. Or rather the lack of Jamie was stopping me.

The predicament I was in was that if I turned up at home without him, it wouldn't go unnoticed, and the last thing I wanted was to come to home to was a myriad of questions.

Of course the other predicament - the biggest predicament, and one I am vehemently trying to get my head around - is that Jamie doesn't want children. And that was a lot worse...

Why now? Why did this conversation have to show up now?

He was right in that we aren't ready for them. I'm definitely not ready! I'm not even twenty-one. But the realisation of the fact he didn't want them at all had sent me into a tailspin anyway... A couple who had been together less than a year don't really talk about these things, especially couples still at university... and yet here we are.

But what I hadn't been prepared for was what came next. What came after I told him to leave.

I thought I was done with the heartache, and the horrid open sore that was opening up inside my chest, making it difficult for me to breathe. I thought I was done with feeling so low I couldn't even bring myself to lift my head, let alone get out of bed.

I'd gone through this once before. Archie leaving the way he did had been so devastating that it changed me, almost beyond recognition, as I became this closed off and depressed person. But Jamie leaving too? The thought made me feel like there was literally nothing left.

In seven months I had become this new person, this happy person, and now all of that had gone, replaced again by the weak, broken version of me. All that work to get myself back to being the person I was before Archie left, happy and bright, was now crumbling down around me.

Today was the day Jamie and I were supposed to leave for home. He had an internship starting on Monday so was staying with us for the summer, so if I turn up without him, well even the most unobservant person would notice. And that's not even mentioning that I am crap at hiding my feelings these days. We were supposed to be driving together, laughing about stupid stuff, singing off-key to the radio and eating snacks all day but instead I'm lying alone in my bed, cocooned in the duvet as the darkness spirals beneath me.

Basically there is no way I am turning up without him, which means I have to speak to him... which means getting out of this bed... which means mustering up enough strength. And strength is something I really didn't have.

But what I do have was anger. And I have it in spades.

Understandably, I am mad.

I'm not mad at the fact he doesn't want kids - the naive part of me is choosing believe that he just doesn't want kids right now. What I am mad at is that he thinks it's okay to laugh at me for wanting them in the future. That isn't funny. That isn't something to laugh at, and for that, I am beyond fuming.

Call me an idiot if you want, but I think it's a perfectly natural thing to want a future with someone you love. And maybe I am the kind of person who plans ahead, but then everybody knows that. Jamie definitely knew that. But then he just comes back and laughs at me? No.

What I felt hurt most was that he seemed to be laughing at the possibility of a future... like I was expendable or replaceable to him, or that a future with me isn't worth planning for. And that made me feel like utter shit.

But this time I can't run away, and I can't let him run away either. I did that once before, but this time we're going to have to face it like adults. I am going to confront him sooner rather than later, search him out before it goes on beyond anything we can repair, and we both get hurt. I need to fix this. I need to fix us.