DECEMBER 27TH 2004 AOIFE
THE RADIO WAS BLASTING in the kitchen downstairs, tormenting me with the sound of Mary Black’s Only a Woman’s Heart as her voice drifted up the staircase.
Her melancholy lyrics wrapped around my already breaking heart.
Numb, I curled up on my bed in the smallest ball I could, with my knees pressed to my chest, and fought to calm the hysteria drowning me.
Pain encompassed every inch of my body, both internally and externally.
I felt like I was hemorrhaging tears. They wouldn’t stop falling.
How I managed to survive Christmas dinner with my family without falling apart at the table, I would never know.
I could only assume that it had a lot to do with the shock and adrenalin that had been thrashing through my veins, but that had long since deserted me.
I knew my parents were worried about me. Aside from leaving the house to fulfil my shift at work this morning, I had spent the past forty-eight hours holed up in my room, which was a huge red flag. Considering the previous night was the biggest night out of the year – and I never missed a St. Stephen’s night out on the tiles.
Hell, even Kev had come knocking on my bedroom door, but I couldn’t talk to him about it.
If I talked about it, if I verbalized it out loud, then it would be real.
And I was desperately clinging to the hope that I would somehow wake up from my nightmare and have everything go back to the way it was before.
My breath was coming in short, achy gasps that clawed at my throat in protest because my heart didn’t want me to breathe.
My heart wanted me to slip into the deepest sleep of my life and wake up when it was over.
The thought only made me cry harder. Because it was over.
It was over and I wasn’t ready for it to be. I wasn’t ready for him to leave me.
But he had.
All of my calls had gone unanswered, while my texts went unsent because I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling long enough to type out a message.
Breaking up with me had been a knife to the back and ignoring me was just another cruel twist of the blade.
I had spent the bones of four years in a relationship with Paul, and never once in that entire space of time, had he provoked such conflicted turmoil inside of my heart like Joey had.
Like he continued to do.
I didn’t want to think of what Joey was doing now that we were over. I hoped he was as miserable as I was, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath.
He had been quick enough to run out and shit on our relationship, so what was to say he wouldn’t drown this version of his sorrows inside another girl.
Bullshit, a voice in my head hissed, that’s your hurt talking, and you know it.
Yeah, I knew that.
I also knew that he loved me.
It wasn’t a matter of there being someone else in this instance. The only person getting in between us was Joey.
Depression had its claws latched deep inside of me.
My throat felt like sawdust, and my heart felt like it had been crushed to pieces. It was disintegrating in my chest, and I couldn’t handle the sensation a second longer.
Get up, my pride demanded, don’t you dare lie down like this.
Forcing myself to unlock my rigid muscles, I slowly clambered off the bed and stood up on shaky legs, surprised that my body could balance itself after the knockout blow I’d taken.
My heart sure as hell felt like it had been KO’d.
My eyelashes felt thick and heavy from the sheer height of crying, and it took a few moments for the blurriness to recede and my vision to clear.
That’s it, the voice in my head coaxed, now stay up.
Breathing hard and ragged, I moved on autopilot, walking out of my room and into the bathroom.
Locking the door behind me, I wobbled like a newborn foal towards the sink, and then clutched the basin with a death grip, while I clenched my eyes shut and forced myself to smother the scream trying to escape me.
“Argh!” the tearing sound ripped out of me, and I cringed, tightening my fingers on the porcelain rim until my knuckles turned white.
You will not fall apart.
I held my breath to steady the sobbing.
You will not crumble.
Trembling, I reached for my toothbrush and ran it under the cold tap before squeezing a dollop of toothpaste on the brush and shoving it into my
mouth.
I scrubbed my teeth with a viciousness that threatened to make my gums bleed.
I didn’t care.
I just needed to wash it all away somehow. Erase everything.
Nothing could do that for me, though.
I kept thinking that if I had handled my emotions differently that morning, then maybe I could have prevented this.
If I had only waited until he was stable enough to have a coherent conversation, then maybe we wouldn’t have ended the way we had.
Shaking my head, I pushed the thoughts away and focused on small mundane tasks like rinsing my toothbrush, screwing the cap back on the paste, turning off the tap, setting my toothbrush back in its holder.
Those, I could manage.
When I had regathered some semblance of self-control, I switched on the shower and stripped, peeling every stitch of clothing off before stepping under the blistering spray of scalding water. Yet I was frozen to the bone, trembling from head to toe, with my teeth chattering violently.
I felt violated.
I felt ripped fucking open.
“I WANT you to know that you’ve been the best part of my day for every day since I was twelve years old.”
HIS WORDS CONTINUED to circle around in my mind until I felt like climbing into my car, driving to his house, and throttling him.
And then, the image of how he looked on that mattress, with a needle in his arm, and his eyes rolling back in his head, infiltrated my thoughts, and I wanted to hold him to my chest and never let go.
No, scratch that; I wanted to die from the unfairness of it all.
“So, do you have a name, boy-who-can-think-for-himself?”
“Does it matter? We both know that you’ll be calling me baby by the end of the day.”
NUMB, I grabbed a bottle of shampoo from the rack and lathered my hair. Taking a clean facecloth, I soaked it under the water and then pressed it to my face, breathing in the hot steam.
“I’M NOT OKAY? Is that what you wanted me to admit? Is that what you want to hear, Molloy? That I’m not okay.”
TEARING at my face with the cloth, I roughly washed any residue makeup away, and then stared lifelessly down at the white cloth streaked with a concoction of mascara, foundation, and lipstick.
“HE WILL NEVER WANT you more than he wants his next fix, Aoife. That’s the sad truth of my son’s life.”
NUMB AND BROKEN, I switched off the shower and stepped out, wrapping myself in the biggest, fluffiest white towel I could find before padding back to my room.
Music continued to waft from downstairs, and sound of laughter assured me that my parents had friends over for drinks.
They did this every Christmas, and normally I would be the first one down there, sipping on cheap prosecco and sharing some lighthearted flirty banter with their friends’ sons. Honestly though, I didn’t have the energy left to rustle up a smile, much less a conversation.
I felt hollow.
Exhaling a ragged breath when I climbed onto my bed, I reached for my phone, and pressed the redial button.
“This is Joey, you know what to do.“
Beep.
“I don’t love you,” I whispered brokenly into the phone. A tear trickled down my cheek, and I clenched my eyes shut. “I really, really don’t love you, asshole.”
