Always and Forever

I didn’t know what was going on. In half an hour I was done crying but I felt worse than when I was crying. They were constantly there, the tears that is, threatening to burst through the barriers of my eyes and stain my cheeks, tissues and about everything else around me.

It was almost like I was in a glass box, watching things happen around and to me but not really being a part of it. I felt like I wasn’t even alive anymore and I was up somewhere, looking down on life functioning without me.

It’s only been a few hours since Brendon broke up with me, and I wasn’t quite sure if I had quite realised it yet. The tears which were threatening to come through hadn’t and I was waiting for them. I couldn’t help but get angry; they should’ve been here by now.

I picked up the flowers he gave me, vase and all and threw them across the room where the vase shattered and petals flew everywhere. Next was everything on my dresser, they flew across the room at high speed before hitting walls and falling to the ground.

Soon, everything that was in my once neat room was scattered across the floor. There were dints on the walls and almost everything had been over turned. I don’t know what got into me, I just lost it.

When my mom came home that night, she found me curled up in the fetal position on the floor, shaking and sobbing dryly. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think or move and I could barely breathe. After not speaking to my mom for weeks she helped me up into her room and put me to bed where I slept, for two whole days.

I started eating again on the fourth day after the break up but soon stopped when I began to vomit up everything I had eaten.

On the fifth day Carla convinced me to come into work. I was more of a hazard than a help spending the whole day crying on her shoulder. I could’ve sworn I saw Brendon that day and it pushed me over the edge, if I hadn’t already gone over. As soon as I saw him I began to sweat all over, my breathing picked up but the air kept on getting trapped in my throat, making me choke, splutter and gasp for air. The shaking returned and my hands were tingling and going numb.

“Holly! What’s wrong?” Carla asked, running up to me with a glass of water in hand.

To be honest, I had no idea what was going on, just that I was losing my mind. I started screaming it seemed like the only thing I could do. My legs fell out from underneath me and as I hit the ground I felt a surge of pain rocket through my body making me vomit into the nearest bin.

My head was spinning and I was going crazy, the last thing I remember was throwing up again, and then everything going black.

“She’s had a panic attack Mr and Mrs. Miller” I could hear what was going on around me, but I didn’t have strength to open my eyes or talk “Can you think of anything that could have bought this on?”

My dad was the first to speak “Something happened this week, neither of us really knows what b-but she hasn’t spoken to anyone, she’s barely eaten, sh-”

“And you can’t think of anything that may have caused this?”

“No-no, I mean, she does well in school-” Now was my mom’s turn to speak.

“Boyfriend?”

“Th-there was a boy, but I assume he’s out of the picture, he had been for qui-”

“Carol, he’s not out of the picture” Dad snapped “he’s been around here, haven’t you heard them at night?”

“Heard what?”

“The talking, the laughing, he-. That’s what it is” my dad proclaimed as if he had just found a cure for cancer “that’s it, they're no longer together. Could that have really caused this?”

I heard the doctor sigh “In some cases yes, it all depends how attached she was to him.”

I lay in the hospital bed like a drug addict going through a withdrawal, shaking and biting the gums from the inside of my mouth until they bleed. Brendon was like my cocaine, and I had just gone cold turkey.

******

I spent the next three days in hospital. In hospital I had another three panic attacks, but that wasn’t what I hated, what I hated was the night terrors. Night terrors usually happen to children but can occur in teenagers and adults after trauma. Every few nights I wake up in a cold sweat, breathing rapidly and screaming. I’d usually have two or three nurses holding me down while another three were trying to wake me, not that I remembered anything that was going on. Apparently, sometimes they went for less than a minute, and some lasted hours, I usually screamed and thrashed in my bed, throwing the sheets off of me, and screaming, for Brendon.

During the days I wallowed in self pity. That’s what I was after all, pathetic. My mom tried to make me speak but I couldn’t, I didn’t want to; in my head I had lost the ability to talk. I tried to eat but then I’d just throw up. I was losing so much weight that the bones on my chest were beginning to stick out as were my ribs, they were protruding from my back, I could feel the when I lied down. I couldn’t help but smile at that, the girls would be proud.

“Holly, please, you need to talk” my parent had gotten me a shrink. “Holly, please.” She was a nice woman, just out of Uni, her name was Emma. Her hair was short, jet black and stuck out in all directions. She was a lover of Ed Hardy and her arms and legs were covered in various tattoos. “Who’s Brendon Holly?”

I started crying again.

“Holly, please, I want to help you.”

For the rest of the session I was silent well, apart from my crying. I wanted to talk but only to her, unlike the usual perception of psychologist, it seemed as if she actually cared and wasn’t counting down the minutes until she got paid. I wanted to tell her what was wrong but I couldn’t, I couldn’t speak.

On the twelfth day, I realised how pathetic it was that I was counting the days since Brendon broke up with me. Saying it in my head, Brendon broke up with me tore me apart, made me crumble, made my whole body ache.

I also started eating again on the twelfth day, truth be told, I had been in hospital for so long, doing the same ritual for so long that I had actually forgotten what day of the week it was, but it was twelve day since Brendon broke up with me, we broke up on a Monday, that meant today was Saturday. I could only hold down jello, but it was a start.

“Holly, you’re never going to get out of here if you don’t start speaking to me” Emma sighed during one of our sessions.

I just looked at her, I was going to speak, I had to get out of here.

“That’s a nice bracelet” she smiled looking down at my wrist.

“He gave it to me” My voice was hoarse and croaky, like a toad but I didn’t care, I had spoken.

“Brendon gave it to you?”

I nodded and with that, she knew I wouldn’t speak anymore.

On the Monday, we spoke a bit more, not about Brendon, about getting back to school and returning back to normal life, but for me, life wasn’t normal unless I was with Brendon.

The night terrors were still happening but they were less intense but went for longer. I only screamed every now and again, now I just woke up with tears running down my cheeks.

I missed him so much that words wouldn’t even being to describe it. I longed for him, I couldn’t function without him. I wanted his lips back, his warm arms back, I want the motor bike rides back, as much as I hated them. I wanted to see him coming through my window, I want his smile, his laugh even his yelling. I wanted him back.

A nurse came into my room “Holly, you have a visitor.”