When?

18. He was my life.

A/N: Hey, guys, so I didn't exactly get that many readers for my second update, but here is another chapter! I am contemplating ending this story in like 2-3 chapters, or going on with it, so let me know what you think :)

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Judith

I knew pain. Pain, I was familiar with, but this was much worse. This was ruthless, it didn’t leave a fiber of my being without tearing it apart. This was cruel, it attacked with all its power, and then it attacked again. This was unfair, it took it all away from me. I was powerless. Weaponless. I stood by the door, his smell still filling the air. He didn’t give me the time to tell him that I loved him too. He didn’t give me the time to tell him that I was sorry for ruining him, that I was sorry for taking him for granted, that I was sorry for breaking his golden heart. He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to listen. He had had enough.

“ Judith, can I come in?” Louis’ voice came with a single knock on the door. I opened my mouth, but my voice had gone mute.

“ Are you okay?” He questioned, opening the door just enough for his head to protrude.

“ Where is he?” My eyes never dared meet Louis’ sad blue ones, as he fully came into the room.

“ I don’t know. He ran off, but I’m guessing, he needs to be alone for a while.” Louis said, with a sigh.

“ Don’t let him shut down again, Louis. He’s going to need you, so just be there, alright?” Louis took the time to examine me, his eyes questioning my attitude.

“ Are you sure you’re okay?” A small smile formed onto my lips, bringing my eyes to meet Louis’ worried gaze.

“ I’ll get going, so go look for him, and bring him back. Stay with him, and listen to him. Do everything I never did, Louis. Be there for him the way I never was.”

“ Where are you going?”

“ I’ll go to my apartment. I need to get my shit together. I need to get better, for him.” Tears blocked my words at the mention of him. Louis silently pulled me into his arms, burying his face into my hair.

“ He’ll forgive you, Judith. He just needs some time, but he will.”

“ I want him to forgive himself.” And I did. Through all his cruel, raged, words, one thing caught my attention the most, the guilt lingering in his tone. The remorse squeezing his insides, every time his eyes met my own. Harry didn’t deserve that. Harry deserved all that was good in the world, all that was not me.

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The house was empty. He wasn’t sleeping on the couch with the book laying numbly on his chest. He wasn’t humming his favorite question filling the apartment with music and joy and happiness. He wasn’t cooking the only dish he knew how to make; pasta with grilled chicken. He wasn’t frantically tidying the mess I made. He wasn’t there and that very thought, killed me. How could I not realize earlier how utterly, endlessly, limitlessly and absolutely I was in love with him? How did I let it get this far? How did I not love him earlier? How did I not love him enough?

The days got longer, blurrier, but no matter how much they had worsened, they never compared to the nights; when I had nightmares of that night at the bar. Detoxication was having its toll on me, and most of the time, I was screaming out of pain till I passed out. Detoxication wasn’t only from drugs, it was my body ridding itself from all my demons, all the toxics that I had inserted all on my own, without a syringe or a glass or even a pill. It was trying to depend on its own, without the aching need for Harry to aid it. And that was what hurt the most, because even though all I wanted was to forget him, to not need him, he was why I was doing what I was doing. I was doing this for him, yet, without him. And I missed him. Louis came over almost on daily basis; cleaned up where I had threw up, collected all the garbage in one bag, made the mess I made upon the place into a home. The boys took shifts too, because I was not to be left alone, even though, I had never felt lonelier.

“ Don’t leave me, Harry.” I’d whisper into the safety of his arms.

“ This is Louis, Judith, not Harry.” He’d remind me.

“ Tell him not to give up on me yet.” My voice would shake, as I slipped into unconsciousness.

“ He won’t.” He’d promise, and then it would all go black.

Writing helped, at times when I would actually be capable of holding a pen properly, without my hand trembling, or my sight going blurry. I didn’t know if it made sense, most times, I wouldn’t even be in a state of mind that qualified me to understand what I was writing. But I wrote because talking was too much effort at the time, and if I had kept it inside, it would have eaten me alive, and there was barely anything left. I read too, or Louis would read to me, and somehow, I’d always find myself reliving those sleepless nights, when Harry would read to me. His voice hoarse, thick in sleepiness, altering with every expression he met in the words, causing me to giggle at how sunken he was into the story.

“Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that ours didn't go on forever.”

I wondered if Harry lingered at that quote the way I did. I wondered if he even read that book ever again. Did he want to be reminded of me? Or did he want to forget me all together? Did he wish it would have lasted forever? Or had he always seen it coming; me fucking it all up?

“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.”

Then why hadn’t it lessened already? Why did I feel like I was drowning into an endless ocean of grief over the loss of everything I had ever had? Why did everything feel so impossibly difficult and undoable? Why did I still need him? Could the grief ever lessen if every breath you took, reminded you of the reason why you wanted to take it, which would always be him? Could the grief ever subside for me to find another reason to breathe other than his mere existence? Honestly, if that grief ever lessened, I’m afraid, I would lose all will to fight. If that grief subsided, then that would mean that I was adapting to life without him, and there was simply no life without him. He was life.