Page 8 of Someone Like You

Giselle

I slid one cotton-candy-colored toenail from underneath the bubbles. Just one that I wiggled ever so slightly. Slowly, I allowed the other four to slide up the smooth walls of the Roman tub. Turning the jets off, I slid down slightly and allowed the heat from the water to soothe my aching muscles.

My muscles were sore from the hour and a half workout I had done after leaving the office, trying to chase away my demons. The workout had not helped, so I grabbed a bottle of wine and some Indian cuisine on the way home.

The bottle of wine that I had mostly consumed, and even carried to the bathroom with me, was calling my name again.

I knew that I would pay for it tomorrow, but I didn’t care.

After all, the office was closed on Fridays, and I could sleep in and then catch up on my administrative workload in the afternoon.

It would be so easy to succumb to my thoughts.

The guilt and the shame that had stretched its tentacles toward me throughout the day, which I had pushed to the recesses of the darkness, now grabbed at me.

I had no strength to fight it. Tears drenched my face as I reached up and pulled the tightly coiled twists down and allowed them to drape around my shoulders and become soaked by the water and bubbles.

I gripped the edges of the tub with my nails. After several seconds, I pulled them away and covered my face with my hands. The sobs shook my body as I screamed in the confines of my bathroom. “I’m so sooorry!” I cried out.

Grief could be an unpredictable enemy. It crept upon you in the most unexpected ways, clutching you and rendering you weak.

You would question your sanity if you could withstand the power of its grip.

Sometimes, you would have to find the strength you did not know you had to rise and gasp for air.

Often, the power it held over you made you feel as if you could not breathe. That was my battle at that moment.

The intrusive ringing of the phone, like a nosy neighbor ringing the doorbell, poured through the speakers of my bathroom.

Someone had dared peek into my bedroom and assumed I was having a personal pity party.

Someone had dared to want to enter my dungeon and intrude upon such a private and intimate time.

Who that uninvited guest was, I had no idea, nor did I care.

I picked up the picture frame that I had laid on the chair beside the tub upon stepping in. My fingers trailed a loving path over the features that were etched into my brain, the ones I felt I had spent a lifetime loving. I thought my love could save Elijah.

We had known one another since college and had been close friends, dating off and on.

It wasn’t until twenty-four that we began a committed relationship, marrying four years later at twenty-eight.

Yet, all the love I poured into our relationship and his heart had not been enough to save him from the darkness of depression.

In the end, he had taken his life behind the precinct in his car at the end of his shift. He had cuddled up in the rear of the dark parking lot and made a lasting memory with his service revolver just as his captain stepped out of his car.

I stood up and set the picture back down on the chair. Grabbing my towel, I wrapped it around myself before picking the picture up again and heading into my bedroom. Not bothering to dry or oil my body, my normal routine, I lay on the bed and curled into a ball.

Wretched sobs were pulled from deep within as I cried out to the love of my life.

“Why, Elijah? Why’d you leave me?”

Tonight was not the first time I wished I could turn back the hands of time.

What could I have done differently to change the way things were?

What could I have said that would have given him the strength to hold on?

Didn’t he know suicide was a sin? Yes, he knew.

We’d talked often about the Bible. What could have been so bad that he couldn’t fight for his life?

“Elijah, baby, I need you so bad,” I cried. “Please, please, baby, come back.” I whimpered, tears running from my eyes, intermingling with the snot that dripped from my nose.

My phone rang again, and when I looked at it, I saw that it was my big sister, Genevieve, whom I called Genni.

I knew that if I didn’t answer the phone, she would only call again, and if I still failed to answer, she would wait for an hour and call again.

In between the calls, I would get a dozen text messages.

If she still didn’t receive a response, she would pop up and use her key to enter my townhome.

“Hey, Genni.”

“Gigi. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

“Don’t lie to me. I hear it in your voice. You’ve been crying.”

I squeezed my eyes and lips shut tight. I tried to hold the pain inside, but it was making my chest ache.

“Oh, sweetie. It’s Elijah, isn’t it? You’re missing him,” she stated softly.

Her compassionate voice broke the damn, and I cried endlessly for several minutes as she just let me cry. She didn’t try to make it better or tell me that everything would be all right. She just let me get it all out.

I finally stopped.

“You want to talk?”

“I don’t know, Genni. It’s just so hard. I think back on the advice Raegan and Eriss and a long line of other well-meaning friends and relatives have given me, and I want to curse them.”

“Why, baby girl?”

“They all said that wounds heal with time. Well, they lied.”

“Maybe they didn’t, baby girl.”

“How would they know? Not one of them has ever walked a step in my shoes. Not one of them has ever lost a love like mine. Not one of them has had the love of their lives to commit suicide. Do they understand how it feels to know that your love wasn’t enough to keep a person here on this earth?

That they didn’t love you enough to stick around to fight the battle with you? Of course, they don’t.” I sobbed.

“You’re right. No one knows your pain except for you.

And even if they had gone through something like that, it still wouldn’t be the same.

Your relationship with Elijah was unique to you and him.

There is not another Elijah, just as there isn’t another Giselle.

What you two had could never be replicated, so it’s impossible for them to feel your pain.

“But I will tell you this. It may not happen today, tomorrow, next week, or even next year. But they’re right.

In time, that wound will heal. Will it go away completely?

Probably not. There will always be a bitter sting when you’re wondering what you could have done differently and what you missed.

But it will heal. I’m sorry it hasn’t happened as soon as you would like, but it will happen, sweetie. ”

“Genni, they keep telling me to hold on. Well, now it falls on deaf ears. They have no clue of my pain and the difficulty I experience letting go of a love that ended a while ago. A love that will never be returned, no matter how much I give of my love and myself.

“Never will I hear the deep, throaty laughter he emitted at one of my corny jokes, nor see the smile that always seemed to be hiding some elusive secret I could not get to. There won’t be any more making love at two and three o’clock in the morning when he woke feeling horny and pulled me close to him.

You know what I miss the most, though, Genni? ”

“What’s that?”

“His soothing, deep voice encouraging me over the phone when I was having a particularly rough day with my clients. For so long, I have just yearned to hear his voice one more time. Even in my efforts to replay the final phone call in my head fifteen minutes before he pulled the trigger, ending his life, his voice was not the same. Not exactly.”

“Listen. Nobody can feel your pain, honey. And I won’t try to tell you to ignore it. Embrace the pain, let it work its course, even if it has to take the long circuitous route, if that’s what you need to do.”

“I’ve done that the last five years.”

“Well, then only you will know when it has wrung you dry. And when it has, put that bitch in its place, and tell her that it’s time to let you live again, breathe again, and quite possibly love again.”

My sister’s voice turned into a whisper on the final phrase, “Love again.” She understood how I believed that, though it was possible, it wasn’t something I wanted. I was afraid of losing someone again. This hurt too much.

Now, coupled with my grief, I had to deal with this new guilt.

I felt as if I had betrayed Elijah’s memory by lusting after another man, especially one who was married.

No man had occupied any space in my head, since the passing of my precious husband, and long before that.

Now it seemed as if Casimir crept into my thoughts more and more, and Elijah wasn’t having it.

He had come back with full force today in my thoughts, my memories, and even just being more aware of his pictures around the house this evening.

I knew that was because of how heavily Casimir had been on my mind.

That was the only explanation for why I was missing Elijah so desperately.

“You’re right, Genni.”

“You did a lot of things rapidly, hoping to move past the pain, and I doubt you ever allowed yourself to feel your grief in the beginning. I know that you have the last few years, but it took you a year to get there. You were too scared of it sinking its tentacles into you. Too scared of becoming depressed.”

I heard what she didn’t say. Like him . I sniffled and grabbed tissues from my nightstand to clean my face.

“I feared letting go. I was so scared of losing my sanity, and I needed to be here for my clients. So, I pushed my feelings aside in the beginning.”

“And you only hurt yourself in the end.”

“You’re right.”

We sat in silence for a while before I spoke again. “At one point this evening, I thought I smelled the scent of his cologne, but I knew that had to be a figment of my imagination.”