Mess

It’s been almost four weeks since Scott and I broke up, well, since he broke up with me. Everything has gotten bad, which pretty much exemplifies the fact that my life was good when he was around. It’s hard. I don’t know where my soul is, but I’m not searching for it anyway. It doesn’t deserve to be found—I don’t deserve to be found. I’m just trying to do what any other heartbroken teenager out there is trying to do: move on with her life. But as I said, it’s fucking difficult.

It got bad because I found out that Mrs. Peabody’s husband abuses her, and I cried so hard for a teacher I never used to like.

I wasn’t sleeping at the time, so at night, what I’d do is I’d drive my car around the block a couple times, maybe go see a movie by myself or something, just to keep myself busy. And on this one sort of humid night—I remember because bugs kept flying onto my windshield—I came back from a drive around downtown and I saw Helen sitting in her car, parked in her driveway. She was crying. I was really confused, and a little sympathetic-feeling, so I parked my car, walked over and sat in her passenger seat. She told me that her husband hit her that night, but that it was okay because it had happened before and because she knows she shouldn’t argue back with him. And that after, he’d always apologise and tell her he loves her. So she couldn’t tell people.

But I was confused because this man had hit her, on more than one occasion, and she wouldn’t leave him. And I was trying to figure out if thats is what love is—staying with someone regardless of their hurtful actions. And I was thinking about it a lot until I’d decided one day to go over to her house while she and her husband were still at work, and pack all of her things into a suitcase. This like a week ago, by the way. She came home first and saw the note I left on the suitcase, which said, “No woman deserves this. You don’t deserve this.” And she left him that same evening.

I often hear her husband crying at night or smashing the occasional bottle of liquor against a wall, and the only reason it annoys me is because it disturbs my father’s sleep, but otherwise, I don’t care. Because her husband deserves to rot in the pain of loss, just like I do. And that’s a thing me and that man have in common, unfortunately. We both abused the love of our significant others, and now we grieve.

Helen is staying in a hotel not too far from here while she sorts out her divorce and she says she’s going to move in with her sister soon, until she finds a place to live. I visit her in the hotel every day, and she thanks me everyday. And then she cries. And then I cry.

I’m kind of amazed at the way how everything got different, fast. Things were in a seemingly ordinary stance, and the moment I blink, it’s all different. It’s scary, but I’ve learned to be passive about it.

Evie’s worried about me, and Kit keeps coming over to check on me, and my dad cooks Italian food almost every night now for me to warm up for my dinner the next day since he is still working late at the firm, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps the void.

I visit my mom’s rest more often, too. I did yesterday, and I told her she was wrong. Pain isn’t temporary. It keeps coming back.

I used to hate routine, I really did. I hated school, its systematicness, its hidden curriculum and persistent distressing social affairs, but it doesn’t affect me now, the social stuff. It turns out Californian sixteen-year-olds don’t like quiet people. But the systematic stuff, the set class times, the set classwork and assignments, it keeps me busy. Which is what I need. Never in my life did I think I would need school, not in that way. So I like the ‘same-old’ bullshit, because it helps me deal with things, I can’t keep up when things are moving all the time. I swear to God, I can’t.

I tie the shoelaces of my grey converses before heading out the door, and grabbing both my car keys and house keys off the wobbly glass table in the foyer. That damn table. I should put some folded paper beneath the short leg, or something.