Edward's Diary

Chapter 25 - Youth (Leah's POV)

YOUTH

Dear Diary,

“Shadows settle on the place, that you loved. Our minds are troubled by the emptiness.

Destroy the metal it’s a waste of time, from the perfect start to the finish line.

And if you’re still breathing, you are the lucky ones. Coz most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs.

Setting fire to our insides for fun, collecting names of the lovers that went wrong.

The lovers that went wrong.”

 Daughter’s Youth blared through my earphones which were connected to my age of the century iPod, and I felt like I could never feel more peaceful than I did in this moment right here. It was nothing like you could describe, because words fell short of what you were feeling. You could do nothing except only feel. It was as if your heart had been hollowed out, leaving a gaping hole that let everything inside. It could be painful when you looked at it, but it was nothing but pleasurable to me because of what I had chosen to do with it.

I had somehow emptied out my heart and my brain, detached them from the pandemonium that I knew was ensuing in the house that had left behind. I was, as of now, only a breathing, walking, talking amalgamation of flesh and bones, but I had never felt more alive. My heart was only a machine that pumped blood, and my brain only a tool that controlled bodily movements and thought processes. For all I cared, they might not even have been there.

All I could feel was wetness beneath my body, laying on the bed of fresh grass that I was. The cool air of dusk swirled around me, ruffling the soft blades of green in even softer ways, so they brushed against my skin, tickling where they met. Each brush was a cleansing ritual; each breath an expulsion of pollution and darkness from within. The wind caressed my hair and cheeks like a lover, fumbling and yet sure of his actions, bursting with love that he doesn’t know what to do with except pouring into the object of his affection.

The more I listened, the more my body fell in sync with the beats and the strums, until I was nothing but a hollowed out version of myself, floating with nature as one, flowing in the water and levitating in the air.

So that was what bliss felt like.

Why had I never done this before?

“What are you doing, Leah?” Not even Jacob’s accusation could get to me in that moment.

“Lay down next to me, Jacob.” I smiled at his voice that had seeped through the song, “Feel.”

I turned the song off, but the silence that ensued was still reverberating with the sounds of the haunted voice, like an echo that lingers even after you have shouted your lungs out. I could feel the drum beats pulsing through me still, the strums somehow controlling the movement of blood inside me. I could feel the heat from Jacob’s body as well, warming me up, providing an antidote to the cold. I wanted to feel this way always.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked me after sometime, but in a tone softer than before.

“I’ll be glad to tell you, but I don’t really know.” I smiled effortlessly for the first time in a long time.

“You can’t give up, Leah. You’re one of us. You can’t do this.” He started off, but I interrupted him before he got too far.

“But I am, Jacob.” I smiled, still not opening my eyes, “I am. My decision is final.”