Chapter Text
I think when someone breaks up with you, you never truly get over it.
It's actually the norm that you spend months of sleepless nights, spiraling into anxiety, self-hatred and severe doubts about your amiability as a person. If you don't do that, are you even human?
It’s normal. Even if your father thinks you belong into a psych ward, I assure you it’s normal. It’s normal to wonder what you could have done differently and it’s normal to hate yourself a little bit and it’s normal to be afraid, that it’s gonna happen again, so you cut off contact with everyone else, before they do it to you first. Normal. So normal.
If I had to describe this feeling, that gnawls inside you, after someone left your life for good, it feels a lot like a bird is picking out your insides, slowly but continuously throughout months.
A constant pain, that accompanies you. Sometimes you’re so so numb, that you don’t feel it anymore, but it’s still there, this little bird pecking into your flesh, never stopping.
There’s actually a myth like that. Edward liked Greek mythology. He liked all those ancient classics and poets and musicians, usually only really smart, refined old men like. He sort of was a really smart, refined old man. He just didn’t look it. Thinking about Edward hurts.
After creating humans, the ancient titan Prometheus wants to gift them fire to cook meat and protect themselves from wild animals and the cold, but the king of gods, Zeus, forbids it.
Knowing he will face harsh punishments, he steals the fire from Olympus and brings it to the humans anyways. I really get that. Prometheus and I, we’re both idiots.
We would do anything for the people we love. Even if it destroys us. We simply love too much, too deeply. It breaks us. Because he loves the humans, he sacrificed himself for them.
Zeus chained him to a rock in the mountains, and everyday an eagle came to eat a part of his liver. But because Prometheus is an immortal, his liver would regrow every night, which meant Prometheus had to endure this punishment for eternity.
Just because he wanted to help someone he loved so dearly. But did they appreciate his sacrifice? Did someone love him equally back, did someone appear to safe him? No. Of course not. Because he’s an idiot, like me. A self-sacrificing idiot who loves too deeply.
But I can’t help sympathize with him. Every day I wake up, go to school and work, and spend the countless starring into nothingness for countless hours, while feeling like an eagle is picking out a part of my liver, day for day.
Time doesn’t have meaning anymore and every hour I spend awake, feels like a chore.
Charlie slowly and quietly opens the door, as if he was trying to catch me in the act of something. Drinking the pain away with a bottle of wine or cutting my skin or other unstable things people do, when they grieve the love of their life dumping them because they’re not good enough.
He thinks I’m deeply unstable. But I don’t do any of these things. I wouldn’t do anything reckless. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Honouring the promise, I made for someone who irreparably and irrevocably broke my heart.
“Hello.”, I mutter quietly and my voice sounds hoarse and weird, probably because I didn’t talk with a single person today, even though the day is almost over.
“Hello.”, his calm voice mirrors the awkwardness of mine. I wonder why it feels so strange and weird between us, even though we’re family. Isn’t family supposed to like…feel comfortable? But to be fair, Charlie didn’t raise me and he’s trying his best. I mean you don’t suddenly get to have to deal with a teenage daughter who’s grieving the loss of her supernatural boyfriend every day. It’s complicated. And strange. I should cut him some slack.
“Wanna watch the game with me?”, he awkwardly shifts from one foot to the other, gazing at me like I’m extremely mentally unstable. I look him firmly into the eyes, feeling a bit ridiculed.
“I’d rather clean the toilet than watch a sports game with you.”, I mutter with a little bit of snide and he chuckles nervously, “Yeah, right. Girls and sports.” My brows furrowed.
“That’s a stereotype, Charlie. Some girls like sports.”, I insist, even though I totally fall under this stereotype. He gifts me a soft smile.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”, he shrugs my comment off. “Want me to order food for you?" I nod and he seems surprised. “You want to eat?”, he scratches his neck, seemingly in thought. “Okay. I’ll order your favourite. Sushi sound good?”, he asks with an excited smile and I nod again, with a confused look in my face.
He quickly darts outside my room, before I can change my opinion about the food. That was weird. Then I realise that Charlie has been asking me if I want to order food almost every night since Edward left and I never took up on that order, because I was too depressed to feel hungry.
Oh. My hunger instantly disappears and the all to well familiar sadness settles in. But I don’t have the heart to go downstairs and tell Charlie, that I won’t eat dinner. I sigh.
There's just something incredibly calming about feeling miserable. As if the universe is balanced, the stars are aligned, everything is harmonizing, but only when im deeply in pain.
I only feel a hundred percent comfortable in my body, only feel like everything feels just right, when I'm suffering.
Maybe I'm supposed to suffer, maybe some kind of god or mystical being decided that human civilization can only thrive, as long I'm miserable.
And the only reason I met Edward was to feel joy for a short moment, only to rip it away and heighten the pain.