Alone on Cloud 9

Alone on Cloud 9 (6)

Sorry it's been such a long wait, as usual, on the bright side it is long...

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xo.

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"It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming."

- Dear John

Chapter 6                        Grade 12

April 24

I'd imagined this moment a hundred times.

I could picture each one like a movie in my head, down to the very last detail, but not at work, not at the one place I considered to be my home.

I could never have foreseen the way the reassuring and intoxicating smell of coffee could turn sour and cloying, of the way the music from the sound system was suddenly much to loud, and the lights too bright, all drowning me, and I never, ever, expected to run.

But then, that's what I did back then too.

To my credit, I didn't just drop everything and run. I calmly put down the bottle of hazelnut syrup, took slow casual steps to the back room, untied my apron and placed it on the hook and gently closed the back door on my way out.

Then I ran.

In books, this was the part where the heroine runs for miles, letting her problems drop out behind her to tumble down on the sidewalk as she ran, feeling free as the wind, rejuvenated and light until she reached a beautiful hidden grove or scenic view with a glowing flushed face and only slightly out of breath.

In the real world, I made it three blocks before nearly passing out from the exertion in an empty parking lot outside a shop for lease.

Life was so unfair.

And then it caught up to me, everything I'd gone through that day in a blinding rush, and for a second I couldn't even breathe.

It wasn't even that I felt the way I did back then, if was just the sudden overwhelming memory, everything slamming back in sharp focus.

It was like when you're going down a street you've always known, past the same houses and cars that have always been there, a route you could follow with your eyes closed when suddenly you make a turn, one that you've made a million times before, but now you don't recognize a thing.

And the feeling that washes over you, panic, fear, and worry, and just a little bit of denial until you realize in one terrifying second, lost.

You're lost.

And after that everything seems out of place, and you realized that house with the bushes was the wrong color, and her neighbor didn't keep their car on the driveway.

Seeing him was like looking at an optical illusion, like the impossible triangle. You could trace the lines until your eyes watered and your head ached and it would still baffle you until you just had to accept that you could never understand him.

I mean it. 

'You're such a child Arya'

'Such a child'