Lonely Nights // H.S

31.

'I don't know what I'm supposed to do

Haunted by the ghost of you'

*

Sometimes, in moments of complete uncertainty, I start counting the number of petals on a flower. I'll sit in my garden, or maybe the meadows, and I'll find a few to sit by, checking how full their bloom is until the wind gets too heavy and pulls some away. I suppose it serves as a reminder that even after falling, they'll always grow back up again. Their petals will drop, and their stems will wither, but eventually, they'll find themselves reborn, with an even greater blossom than the last.

When I focus on that, counting until I have nothing left, knowing that sometimes things have to end before they get better, it helps me to understand that maybe this funny feeling inside my chest isn't the end of the world, because one day it will fly with the breeze of spring, too. Anxiety will slowly dissipate, and maybe the feelings I have about myself will move on with it.

This morning, I went to the meadow for the first time in nearly a month, and I looked at the flowers as if they were old friends. We said our hellos, caught each other up with our lives, and they listened to every word. They let me look at them for as long as I needed, even allowed me to rub my fingers across their petals and stems, and once I was finally ready to head back home, I walked slowly as pieces of the weight on my shoulders chipped away.

It prepared me for what's to come, the dreaded conversations that will inevitably happen about my choices these past eight months and all the explanations I will have to give. Perhaps I am ready for the disapproving looks and quiet whispers from those that find out, perhaps they will not harm me if I simply accept that, for now, they will be loud, but eventually, I'll grow out of it, and people won't associate such a thing with me.

I've always carried around a lot of shame about things I didn't really have control over. Daring to exist, to live, to thrive. Doing things any other person is expected to do and being okay with it. I followed my routines and I walked down the correct paths, but still I felt like I had to be punished for something. Really, I had been punishing myself. I had never felt like enough, and for that I became my own worst enemy. But now I have something tangible that I should feel shameful for, and it doesn't feel hardly as daunting as it did when everything was in my mind.

This shame is different. A direct consequence from an action I chose to do, not something that lingered because other people had made me feel less than. I'm not feeling shameful because I have spent 26 years of my life feeling unworthy of love, because so many people have walked out and left me stranded, because I've never had anyone to call my own. I'm feeling shame because I allowed that fear control me, and as a result I did things I can never take back.

I will never ignore the part I played in my affair with Harry. I may have been misled, but I still chose to pursue someone that was already promised to another.

Even so, knowing that I am not the kind of villain I made myself out to be, that I am allowed to grieve and feel equally as hurt, has made things slightly bearable. Since my conversation with Prue, my feelings on the matter have shifted somewhat. Of course, it still feels like I am mourning the death of something, but it's not just a relationship or a love I thought I deserved, it is the loss of a person I hardly knew. Harry, the man I have always convinced myself to be my mirror, has so many secrets and hidden faces, that he barely recognises his own reflections most days. And what he did may have been spurred on by his own insecurities and self-loathing, but he didn't just let it control him, he used it to get what he wanted and allowed it to excuse his actions.

Our first conversation is today. There is a bundle of nerves so unimaginably busy in my stomach right now, it almost feels like bumper cars purposefully hitting each other. And with each moment of impact, they seem to speed up, almost knocking the air from my lungs whenever I dare to think about what's about to come.