Here We Go Again

The Grieving Stage

Here We Go Again

Chapter 29: The Grieving Stage

POV: Nia and Albus

It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to get dressed. It was hard to go to class and sit through an entire lesson without breaking down in tears. It was hard to walk through the castle and not see the memories that once took place in the nooks and crannies of the corridors and empty halls. It was hard to sit among people and not feel like the walls were caving in around me. It was hard just to fucking breathe.

I didn't recognize the reflection staring back at me. Those blue eyes looking back at me, staring and inspecting...They were strangers. They held sadness, heartbreak, misery, and everything else that tears apart souls. There was no gleam. There was no sparkle of righteousness and confidence that once made me proud. Aside from the depression, they were otherwise empty. Everything inside me just felt empty.

There was pain, of course there was. I felt pain every single second of every single day. The pain was my absolute truth. After a while, though...After a while pain numbs you and you just can't feel anything anymore. You can't feel time ticking away and eating away the days, but you can feel pieces of your heart dying.

That's who I am now: a girl who's letting herself rot away.

My strength was gone—everything good about me was gone. I was a shell of what I used to be. That terrified me. That plagued my nightmares when a pair of emerald eyes didn't. This pain was too real and too fresh, it terrified me to think that maybe it was all I was going to know. Pain, and sometimes the kindness of being numb.

How do I go on?

Merlin. I hate that. I hate thinking that. But it's true. It's so fucking true. I've made fun of those annoying, weak girls who made a bloke the center of the world and who lived only for them. I always pitied the lot of them; those stupid, stupid girls. But look at me. Look at me, and I dare you not to see the comparisons. I hate myself. I hate my heart. I hate him.

You give your heart to someone, absolutely every aspect of your heart, even the pieces you don't like, the parts that you're ashamed of, and hope to the highest power that they take care of it. You give them all your trust. You give them your imperfect heart and hope that they can keep it safe from the dangers of romance. They look at it and see beauty, something you can't, and a part of you—the tiniest part of you—thinks that maybe they're being sincere. You see the way they look at you, at your mutilated heart, and you wonder how you ever got so lucky. You go to bed at night and you believe, you believe with everything you have, that you're in safe hands. You close your eyes believing that Love was compassionate by giving him to you. That maybe you've finally done something right, and that you're never going to suffer another broken illusion.

That's when it happens. In those blind moments, during the nights when your faith in him is solid, while he leads you which ever way he wants, when you think of him as the light, you give him your life in a silver platter. You give him absolutely everything and you never realize it.

When they're gone, after they've broken your already beaten and fragile heart, you finally see how stupid you were. You realize that not only you gave him your heart and soul, but your mind, too. You gave him every thought you ever created about yourself, including all the traits that made you into who you are. You gave him absolutely every fucking thing. With him, that strong, confident, fun, loving, independent, caring girl is gone, too.

That's how you end up hollow, trapped in an even emptier world. Without meaning to, you gave him your life and he took it without a proper goodbye. This is how your days become nights and your nights never let the rays of the sun take over...