Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Now I was at that point in the game where I felt at least eighty percent ready to let him go. There was no point in holding onto the past anyway, he was gone, and I’m no homewrecker. But there’s still this small part of me that thinks he’s coming home.
I guess being in love with him the way I was wasn’t something to easily get over. This hurts my heart even more because the fact and the way he moved on just prove that he’d never loved me the way I loved him, and that hurts even more than the betrayal in some ways.
I found, too, once I let myself open up that wound again, that part of my problem was that I still felt that sense of responsibility to him that I did when we were together. I’d promised to always be there for him and that I would never desert him, especially when he was at his lowest.
The fact that he’d looked horrible in the weeks and months after our split has haunted me in ways that I hadn’t realized. And though he was no longer my problem to deal with, that part of me, the part that had given my whole heart to him and what I thought we would be, was still tied up in his joys and his sorrows.
The song was kind of me putting all of that down and walking away, never to look back. It was freeing, liberating, and long overdue. So, even though the song had climbed the charts and still was, I needed time to mourn again, this time for the last time.
I guess I needed him to accept and let me go because even though he’d moved on, there was still a lot of unfinished business between us, and that, more than anything, was holding me hostage to a past that could never be revisited.
In all honesty, I find that it’s not that easy to move on even with the hurt and the pain that I still suffer and that I’ve come to realize is the price of a love lost. That searing pain may never disappear completely; I may always see his face in my dreams even as my life go on. But I have to find a way to move on and live with my new normal.
I’d come to all these conclusions in the last few days of seclusion. For the first time, the fact that I had said my last goodbye had given me the space I needed to mourn to put it all behind me and move on. Now I was ready to live again, to find love again, even though I knew that nothing would ever come close to the fiery passion I once felt for him.
Feeling like I’d exerted the best I had to offer in my dead relationship didn’t exactly give me much hope for what my future held, but hiding myself away, licking my wounds into eternity was not the answer. So even though there was a little part of me that hated the idea of moving on with anyone other than him, the bigger part of me knew and accepted that it was time.
I’d even written some new lyrics that heralded the new me, something to give to the fans who’d supported me throughout it all. My way of letting them know that I was ready to move on and that they didn’t need to worry about me anymore the way I knew they had been for the past five long years.
So, my time in solitude was not wasted. I hadn’t spent my days curled up in bed in the fetal position with tears and heartache as my only sustenance; that was progress, wasn’t it?
I’d finally come up for air only to find the house empty. I knew my aunt and uncle were going to be gone for a while, but Rachel was supposed to be home. She was probably having a girl’s night out since I’d been such horrible company these last couple of days, so who could blame her?
I’d barely made it downstairs to make myself a cup of tea when Sydney called to say she would be at the gate in ten minutes, and now here we are. “Who do you think…. you didn’t have anything to do with this, did you?”
“I wish. Do you really think if I’d had that kind of information, that I’d have sat on it this long? No way.”
I looked back at the screen, this time focusing on the comments below each post. I never thought that I would see this. There was so much that I’d had to swallow because I knew the reach and influence of that family in this town. I’ll never forget what happened the last time I crossed the mother and what it had cost me.