99 Days Without You

Days 51-70

Day Fifty-One – Day Seventy:

Yes, I know this is a lot of days to squeeze into one tiny entry… but I don’t want to bore you with every single day I spent mucking around with my little sisters and my mother and stepfather. Because really, each day was basically spent in the same way. I would wake up to Phoebe or Daisy pulling at every strand of my hair, giggling at me to wake up, and that breakfast was ready. Politely, I always declined, causing them to slip away in disappointment. Sleep would capture me for only a little while longer, before mother would burst into my room, a plate full of food in her hands. She would sit at the edge of my bed until I finally scarfed every last bit of food from the plate, and she would quietly leave the room with a smile on her face. I guess it felt good making her smile, but after every meal I ate I felt sluggish, and that only made me want to sleep more. Of course, that wasn’t allowed, and by eleven o’clock I was always dragged away from the comfort of my sheets out to the park or the store or some other place the girls wanted to go. They would play and chatter gleefully as I walked solemnly along them, wondering what I would be doing if you were walking beside me, holding my hand and taking me from my misery. It’s not that I don’t like taking care of the girls, it’s just that after a while—and you know this—they become quite a handful. My family misses you too, you know. There have been some—very few, but some—discussions about you. Mom won’t talk about you for more than a couple minutes though, as she thinks that talking about you will only hurt me. But to be honest, I feel a weight lifted off of my shoulders whenever I speak your name. Yet at the same time, it hurts. I don’t know quite how to explain it, that’s just the way it is. Mark came up to me one day, asking how I was feeling. I told him I was well like I did to everyone else, but for some reason he didn’t seem to go along with my façade as everyone else did. We sat for a while, just talking about anything and everything until he made sure I was feeling better again. And to be honest, for a little while I did begin to feel better. But of course, good feelings never seem to last. Especially when you have a nest of guilt tucked away into your heart. The girls have noticed the change in me, and I feel horrible. I’m hurting everyone around me and I hate it. When they notice my sour mood, at first they had tried to make me smile and laugh, but now they just walk away slowly, as if they’re unsure of how to even handle me anymore. I guess I don’t blame them… I don’t even know how to handle myself. I gained weight and am finally healthy again, and everyone’s happy about that. But I still feel empty inside. The weight gain has only added to the weight set on my shoulders. I don’t know if this is telling you much of how those days went, but like I said, they were quite uneventful. The pain had subsided for a couple days, only to return once again. Needless to say, it didn’t help as much as everyone thought it would.