Pain

“Is there anything you would like to say?”

They all turned expectantly towards me, my sister, Natasha's eyes met mine, there was pure fear in them that reflected my own. SAY SOMETHING they screamed.

I opened my mouth but nothing but a strangled cry escaped. I struggled to drag a shaky breath into my collapsing lungs. It was if the splintered shards of my heart were sticking painfully into my throat. Voices were screaming in my head, I was drowning, drowning in their harrowing words.

I wanted to run, to get away, to escape this pain. I squeezed my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears, trying to silence the drumming that was growing louder and louder and I couldn’t stop it. It was a train skidding off the rails, I was running, running and I, I couldn’t stop. Everything was crashing, burning, his face, and his words, they were sticking like daggers, little needles stabbing and they wouldn’t stop stabbing, they would never stop stabbing. This roaring pain, it was swallowing up everything, enveloping me, a tsunami of despair.  

I wanted to get out, to escape, I didn’t want to be me anymore, I didn’t want to be anyone anymore, the pain... the pain, the drumming it was growing louder. Love and hatred rose up inside of me like vomit and they intertwined, mixed together, and I couldn’t stand it.

I looked into his eyes,  I always said that they looked like the Cornish sea, blue-green-grey. They were filled with so much pain and lies and disgust and I love him and I love him and there were crows digging their claws into my chest and ripping it to pieces and I was falling and falling and it was all black, and I couldn’t hear anything but the sounds of voices screaming and screaming and it was me.
I wanted to claw out everything, gouge out everything until there was nothing left. Just emptiness no memories, no happiness, no pain, no feelings. I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t want to feel anything ever again.

There weren’t words to describe the feeling when that weight was crushing, squeezing me and I couldn’t breathe and I was choking and they were all staring at me with their patronizing eyes. Natasha’s full of worry and Aimee's full of hate and Will's eyes... Will's eyes....

The sounds of my ragged breath and the faint thumps of the pieces of my heart’s feeble beats and the pain, it was like a tidal wave that was drowning me and everything in it.

I was numb, so numb and I couldn’t contain it. I needed to smash something, to break something, I needed to make someone else feel this agonizing pain. The pain that was gnawing at me, ripping me apart slowly, laughing at me when I cried out in agony. I started ripping the tissue up harder and harder, faster and faster.

Let them go. Let them go. They are birds in cages trapped inside your heart, open the doors and let them go. Will, he was embedded there and my hands were trembling my eyes were glazed over and I couldn’t see anything anymore, my senses were gone.

I was swimming in a pool the color of his eyes and I couldn’t hear anything but the screaming in my ears and my shallow breaths and every tick of the clock, every single second that passed was pain. Like the throbbing feeling you get when you bang your shin.
I looked up at him, we were sitting so close, yet so far.
I wanted to take his hand and run, run away and never ever stop, never grow up, never change.
There was pain, I had caused him pain.

I looked at his face, the very face that I’d watched change and grow for that past eight years.

The face of my best friend, the boy I loved to death, who now hated me.

“I can’t” I whispered.