Page 44 of Life Lessons

“How can you say that? You know I would never betray your trust? I wasn’t spying, I just have eyes. And if I noticed, I would imagine other people did too. I have no idea why Mr Caine left, and I was gutted that he did. Not just because he’s a good teacher, but I saw how happy he made you. Contrary to what you seem to believe, I would never want you to feel pain.” With each word, I can feel her sincerity, but I just can’t care.

“I don’t believe you. Get the fuck out of my flat, and don’t ever come back. If I even catch you in the teachers’ apartment block again, I will report you. Now, leave me the fuck alone.”

As I speak, I grab hold of her wrist, more forcefully than I should, and I pull her towards the door. If she doesn’t leave of her own freewill, I will fucking push her out. Before I even realise what is happening, as we get to the door, Trixie grips onto my wrist with her free hand, no doubt trying to try and pull my hand off hers. But as her hand connects with my wrist she presses hard onto the fresh cut, and I can’t help the small yelp that escapes as the unexpected pain shoots down my arm.

Trixie looks at me closely, and before I can stop her she pulls the sleeve of my hoodie up to the crook of my elbow. She not only exposes the newest cut but all the old scars, and other cuts in various stages of healing. There’s no explanation, it’s an obvious finding and Trixie looks at me with concern in those bright baby blues of hers.

“Abbie,” she sighs, and the pity literally ripples off every letter.

Before she gets to say another word, I harshly push her away from me, dropping her arm in the process, and quickly I pull the sleeve down to cover my now bleeding wound. I don’t want to hear what she has to say, so I open the door angrily and make it clear she needs to leave.

Looking defeated Trixie takes a foot towards the door before stopping, turning to look at me and with a small smile on her face, she speaks softly. “I know you are hurting, Abbie. I know you are in pain. You do not need to do this, you don’t need to hurt yourself. I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and after the way you just treated me I should be telling you to fuck off and never talk to you again. But I get it. I get you have your reasons. So, I am leaving because I know you need your space, but I am not walking away. I will always be here, all you need to do is ask for my help. You will always have a friend in me, someone you can trust and confide in. I know I’m a gossip, but with real secrets, I would never betray your trust. You are my best friend, Abbie, and I love you. Please, stop hurting yourself and come and talk to me when you are ready. I need you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Tears are now free-falling down Trixie’s face, but I manage to bite the inside of my lip enough that the pain keeps my own tears at bay. If she sees that I feel, and that I feel for her, in the exact same way, then it will give her more hope. She needs to know there is no hope here and certainly no future.

“Fuck off. I don’t trust you and I don’t want to know you any more. Get out,” I spit with venom I don’t really mean. Once the door is slammed shut behind her, that’s when I finally allow the tears to fall. Now I really have lost everything. My life is empty, a shell of what it could have been. A punishment fit for the crime I committed. I thought before that I didn’t deserve to have a life if Tillie didn’t get one, but still, I tried. I tried because everyone said that’s what Tillie would have wanted. But every time I got close to someone…Jett…Trixie… Every time it ended. I know I am responsible for all of them leaving me, and this is Mother Nature’s way of righting the wrongs. I have to pay the price, pay for the crimes I committed. My pain, my loneliness, they are nothing compared to taking a life.

I sit on the bed, and press against the wound I only recently made. The pain shoots down my arms, and I welcome the feeling. It’s the least I deserve. I think today has been further proof that I’m supposed to merely exist, not to really live. I need to be alone and just allow each minute to pass until I can finally reunite with Tillie.

The days after my argument with Trixie pass by in a blur. I pass her in the corridor, and she gives me a small smile, but makes no attempt to speak to me. She doesn’t even bother trying to text or call me, she knows it’s pointless. We may have only been friends for a very small amount of time, but there’s no denying that Trixie knows me. She can see past the façade I put on for the world. She knows I’m in pain, but she also knows she can’t help me, useless I let her.

The problem is, I don’t want help. This pain, this misery, is self inflicted, and I deserve to feel it. I deserve even more than this. So every time someone shouts a name at me, every time someone throws something, or tries to spit at me, I take it. I don’t shrug it off and try to ignore that it’s happening. I take it and I allow it to consume me.

With each passing day, I shut down a little more. I don’t talk to anyone. I barely eat. I just survive. I do my homework, even doing extra for extra credit because I made a promise to him that I would graduate. I still remember that day fondly. It was a lazy sunday and we had decided to spend the day in bed. In between our hot and sexy sex sessions, we talked. Talking was always easy with him, we could always just be so natural with each other. He always knew he wanted to be a teacher, to follow in the footsteps of his father. That was a rather alien concept for me, the last thing I want to be is anything like my parents. I didn’t even have a plan for the future. I probably had one with Tille, but when she left me my priorities changed. If it wasn’t for the threats from my family, I would never have even come back to school.

The more I talked, and Jett listened, the lighter I felt. He made me think about life, and actually living. For a long time, I simply existed. But he made me think about a future I long since forgot about. I think maybe he felt the same because neither of us could vocalise what we had planned for our future. Jett liked being a teacher, but I always suspected he did it more for his father than because it was what he really wanted. Maybe he has another future out there waiting for him. All I know is that I wanted to be wherever he was.

I told Jett I didn’t want to live off my parents money. I wanted to go out into the world and work for a living. I didn’t earn a penny of their money, and I wanted to feel like whatever I owned, I worked hard for. But I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

We brainstormed ideas, Jett told me what he thought I would be good at. We talked about how we should definitely make lazy Sundays a regular thing for us. It was one of my fondest memories of Jett, and also one of my most painful. It was the day we allowed ourselves to hope. To dream of a future that would be torn from our grasps. Dangled in front of us like the perfect prize before being torn away. Hope is a dangerous thing, and all it has left me with is some scattered pieces of a broken heart and memories too painful to even acknowledge.

As the school week finally ends, and I get to embrace the alone time and break from the monotony and abuse that comes throughout the school week, I can’t help but dread this particular weekend. I know what you are thinking, what weekend activity could possibly be worse than the abuse I suffer each and every day whilst at school? That’s an easy answer. Tomorrow is the day I have been counting down to, whilst also trying to pretend it doesn’t exist. Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of my sister’s death.

It’s an event my mind has been whirling towards the last few days, and I’m not entirely sure what I am supposed to do that day. Should I go visit the grave where my parents buried her against my wishes? Tillie always hated the idea of those places, and the thought of her ashes being stuck in a box under the ground makes me feel physically sick. I don’t even know if anyone goes to care for the elaborate gravestone my mother picked out.

I remember seeing the pictures of her posing next to the headstone, looking very made up, complete with fake tears and fake grief. Who the fuck does a photo shoot at their dead daughters grave? All to advertise some charity event she was hosting.

I wanted Tillie’s ashes to be scattered at the beach near our summer house. Yes, we are that posh we have a house just for summer vacations that is a mere ninety minutes from our regular house. We loved going to the beach, and Tillie had always been a water baby. She loved being in the water or on the water. That is the place I think of when I want to remember my happy go lucky sister. I remember many times I would be laying in the sun, reading a good book, and she would be splashing in the sea singing at the top of her lungs. That was Tillie. Bright, fun, and never one to sit down. She deserved to be immortalised in that way. But when I mentioned it to my mother , you honestly would think I asked her if I could flush Tillie’s ashes down the toilet. She said it was disgusting and unhygienic. What the fuck?

So I didn’t argue, and I let her have the big show funeral that she wanted. At that point I felt like I was living in a haze, just moving from one day to the next. I thought that would pass, and it did. But I never for a million years would have thought that the depressive haze I was in when I first lost her, that it would be back and worse than ever a year later. I thought life was supposed to get easier, not harder.

There’s no way I can go to her grave, it just has no meaning for me. As I sit on my bed mulling it over, the idea comes to me as quickly as that memory did. I am going to go and get the tattoo I have been sketching out for the last couple of weeks and then I am going to go to Tillie’s beach. I am going to play in the water, and sing at the top of my lungs. If Tillie can’t be here to do all the things she loves, then I sure as fuck am going to do them for her. No matter how much it hurts me, and no matter how hard I might crash when it’s over. I deserve that, and she deserves to be remembered.

The morning rollsround and I don’t need an alarm clock to wake me up. I slept very little, simply just laying there for hours at a time, waiting and hoping the universe would do me a favour and help me miss just one day. But as the clock struck midnight, I knew then there was nobody in the universe listening to me. Not that they realistically could have made time speed up, but I was very aware my sleep-addled brain isn’t exactly thinking logically right now.

I get up around four in the morning, pulling the comfortable soft armchair over to the large bay window in the living room areas of my apartment. Pulling the curtains open, I slouch back into the chair and I wait. I wait for the official start to the new day signified by the sun rising.

Very rarely do people, myself included, just sit back and watch the sun rise. But as the purple and pink colours swirl through the dark blues of the night, I wonder why. It really is beautiful. Almost like a mini battle for dominance, that the bright, light colours always win. They twist and turn through the sky until all of the darkness dissipates, and the bright yellow sun can finally pop out. Don’t get me wrong, we are still along the coast of England and it’s only May, but still the sun shines. I can feel a slight breeze leaking through the poor seals of the old window frame, a testament to how old this building really is. But the cold doesn’t bother me.

As I sit there, feeling the sun hit my cheeks and a warmth I wasn’t expecting seeping into my skin, I can’t help but wish life was really like this. That the light always would eventually beat the dark but it doesn’t. When I watch the battle tonight, the darkness will always take back control, reminding the light that any hours they get to shine is simply because they have allowed it. The darkness will always win. A bit like my life. No matter how much I love the light, I can still feel the darkness, that loneliness gnawing away at my insides. Reminding me that any happiness, any relief is only temporary.

A chime sounds from my phone, which surprises me given the early hour. I look at the clock as I open my phone and am shocked to see someone texting me at 6:02am.

Trix: I know what today is. Just know...I’m here. You only have to ask.

My breath catches in my throat and a tear threatens to fall as I allow myself to feel. Why the hell hasn’t she abandoned me? I have spent the last couple of weeks ignoring her, pushing her away, all because she is safer if I’m not in her life. So why does she still care? It literally breaks my heart that after I treated her like such a bitch, she still wants to be here for me.

I was hoping to last a little longer today before the tears began to fall, but no such luck now. As I potter around the kitchen, making myself a coffee to give me the energy I need to survive the day, I let the tears fall. I cry for everything and everyone I have lost. My sister was stolen from me without any warning. The love of my life, left me broken and lost. My best friend, I pushed away but is still lingering. No matter how I lost them, all I keep coming back to is that I will always be alone in the end.

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