Feeling Stalled

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I looked at the clock on the exposed brick wall in sharp anxiety as a feather brush of pain whispered through me. It was seventeen minutes past four and it had already started.

My friends' conversation was a flurry of movement in my peripheral as I braced myself internally for the pain to intensify, willing myself not to let them know. No one could know. I couldn't deal with the questions, the pity, and the pain.

To my dismay I felt the rippling agony blaze across my chest. My whole body stiffened and I fought the urge to curl inward and gasp. I was nauseous and felt like a loose thread from the very fabric of my soul was being slowly and excruciatingly pulled out of me. I needed to get somewhere private so I prayed my hands didn't shake as I picked up my phone and pretended to check it. I pasted a bland look on my face and slapped the table to get the attention of my friends.

Emmie and Dakota both turned towards me at the vibration. Emmie's fine-boned fingers paused in sign as her eyebrows rose high into her smooth dark forehead. Pain grimaced my face and I schooled it into a contrite look as I quickly signed that my mother wanted me home, not trusting myself to ungrit my teeth and mouth the words.

Dakota swept a blonde strand from her serious face as she acknowledged my abrupt interruption with a perfunctory nod while Emmie gave me a look of shared teenage pity as she mouthed, "No problem. See you at school tomorrow Ava."

In the last two years these episodes had been fairly easy to hide even if they did at times make me a bit of a flakey friend to have. Luckily these attacks usually happened awhile after school or late into the night, which gave me a sort of routine to anticipate. There were occasionally days like this though.

I got up from the little faux wood café table and hastily made my way to the stark public bathroom of Mocha Mama, a small but popular coffee house near my high school. I was relieved that I had thought ahead and chosen a table that the bathroom wasn't visible from. It was necessary to plan for the worst in order to keep my secret.

My hands trembled as I flung a stall open and frantically locked it. Already my breath was coming in body wracking shudders. I sat down on the toilet fully clothed and just let the pain of betrayal wash through me. Tears slipped down my cheeks as I felt it roll over me with the wrongness of icy needles and firey waves in alternating torture. I hated that I cried, but I couldn't contain it all inside of me. I needed to let a little of it out into the world or I felt like I would explode into a million pieces of woe and pain.

But I did not cry for him. I refused to give the bastard more of myself than what he had already carved out of my heart. That tender place where starry-eyed dreams of love and a family budded in quiet expectation for the day they could come to fruition. All that was dead now. Carved away ruthlessly every time he committed this act of betrayal against me. My so called soulmate.

It was something so intrinsic to everyday life. In children's story books, movies, the memories of parents, and even taught in classrooms. The fact that we all had a mate. A special one out there that was perfectly tailored to us. That was strong where we are weak, and weak where we are strong. That someday we would hear their call. The only voice in a sea of silent words calling out just for us. And when heard would slowly introduce the beauty that is sound to those of us who had never heard it. A whole world of untapped experiences like music and the sweet call of morning birds. Even the engima of an "annoying" barking dog.

What they don't mention is the harder side of this reality. Like how some people gradually start hearing sound without ever hearing their mate's call. An undeniable and heartbreaking requiem to their mate's death. Or the other unfortunate souls such as myself who experience betrayal. A mate who knowingly chose another, aware that everytime the unnatural union has been consummated their true soulmate feels the slow painful death of the bond between them. That I'd be left forever deaf and alone when the final threads between us have been severed. His call forever lost to me and mine to him.

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