chapter 3: Soulmate who wasn't meant to be

 The trauma

Loving hurts. I don’t love it anymore. I don’t care for people- These became my affirmations. Because I have started feeling this for him, and I should stop them as soon as I can because loving does really hurt. It hurts even more when you give all yours to that person, and that person doesn’t even acknowledge you and chooses the other people but never you, it hurts, over and over again that you reach a point where you can’t even excuse their negative actions towards you anymore. I gave my heart, my soul, and my words to them but they weren’t good enough keepers and broke me down into a million pieces and their promises. I will never fall in love with someone, at least, not the first one because one-sided love is worse than heartbreak. I was fragile and stupid before, but not anymore, I will even ignore Mark if I have to because I will not get hurt again.

we were halfway through the play’s date. Everything was going just fine; it was though hard to ignore Mark when he is playing the lead. It was as if he was born for this character, so natural and the best part is he has read it and remembered all the lines, although I think he is pretending to forget them so as I help him. Why would he do that? so, I was helping him remember his lines, just then I saw Juliana standing behind Mark. I was…not at all happy to see her, I hated her, she was the reason for everything bad in my life. When I saw her, I made a face which was probably very disturbing and obvious that I want to get out of there, most importantly I wanted her to leave, what was she even doing in the school theatre, after all, she did last year, I couldn’t believe she dared to stand near me. Mark saw my expression, and with extreme concern in his eyes he held my hand, and I held his hand tighter. Somehow, I felt weak and got the urge to cry my balls out. A part of me also wanted to punch her in the face and make her bleed from her eyes just like she did to me last year. And she was just there standing in front of me smirking her audacity, her fucking audacity. I could feel Mark’s eyes on me, concerned eyes, telling me it was okay without saying it. He didn’t know about Juliana though. She stepped one foot towards me, and I stepped back Mark came in front of me and asked her to leave immediately. She smirked, smiled, and did her little nod which I knew what it meant, and it was not good. As soon as she left, I started crying like something just went through me, because something did go through me. I cried for probably an hour and Mark just held me and didn’t say anything, he didn’t question me, and he didn’t need answers he just held me tight and told me it is going to be okay and that was the shortest panic attack I had.

After cooling down from my breakdown, we sat on the floor of the amphitheater and finally, Mark said “Anne, I respect if you don’t want to tell me about the thing that happened right now, but just make sure I am here, right beside you and you can tell me anything” he held my hand cupped his hand to my chin which weirdly made me comfortable and made me want to tell him everything. So I started- “Juliana was my best friend since elementary, we used to do everything together, she lived on my block too and we were very close, even our mothers were best friends but due to her parent’s divorce she and her mom moved from our block in 8th grade, she hated it there and due to lack of her mom being present with her and with all that splitting up of her parents affected her mental health so much that she found a drug dealer in our school and started doing all those kind of stuff. I was aware of it but I didn’t know what to do or how to help her, I just used to talk to her until I make her get out of her addiction and I did not want to tell her mom because she was already going through so much and also Jules told me not to. She developed major anger issues too; she started hanging out with druggies and problematic groups although she knew they made my life hell in elementary. Still, I supported her like a good friend, but she stopped acknowledging me and flushed her frustration on me, I still didn’t react anything to that because I knew she was going through so much and how I could leave her in the dumpster, I was supposed to be her best friend. But one day, when I was with Jules and there were her druggie friends too, they were slut shaming girls of our school which made me so uncomfortable, and they were laughing like freaks on something that is not at all funny. Then, they came with racist jokes, then homophobia and I was done. I could not believe my friend was making homophobic jokes it made me so angry I left immediately, and you know what the worst part is- she didn’t even notice I was gone. A day after she called me and pretended as if nothing happened and I shouted at her overall for changing so much and you know all the above, she said “Yo Anne, stop overreacting why are you shouting unnecessarily, are YOU a homo?” and I ended her call on that and never talked ever since except when I took her to the counselor because she mentally assaulted me after that and pushed me from stairs, counselor informed her mom about her drug problems and addictions and failed all her drug tests and gave me a threat last year before going to the rehab that she will end me like I ended her, so ever since then I have been getting panic attacks and seasonal depression with post-accident trauma- welcome to my colorful life” I said that last line with jazz hands and a fake smile on my face. Mark looked at me almost in tears, still holding my hand, and tucked my hair behind my ear which didn’t get tucked because of my enormous curly hair- that thing made us laugh and lightened our mood but shortly after Mark said to me “you are not in this alone” I did not understand him was he saying literally or metaphorically.