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Rachel decided that what she had wasn’t enough anymore. Not the family, the love, her engagement ring, nothing was enough. She wasn’t happy to wake up in her own bed anymore. She wasn’t happy going to school and holding hands with her lover. She was just plain unhappy with her whole damn world. Except for that one morning, when the sun actually shone through her window. The day didn’t look as bleak and dark as all the others before it. Only she didn’t see the dark clouds in the distance. Guess she didn’t notice the oncoming rain either. Must’ve been why she was hell bent on doing something drastic. The day was perfect for breaking hearts.
Everyday life was becoming a bore for Rachel and I was just too wrapped up in myself to see it I guess. Some say that it was because I wasn’t there for her in those two weeks that this happened. But how could I have been there? I was grounded for four weeks. So was this a twisted plea from a long ignored girlfriend or just a genuine mistake of love and lust? Or was there something so much more that I wasn’t even being told?
In our junior year Rachel and I met a girl by the name of Jessica. Jessica had two classes with Rachel and only lunch with me. No one ever suspected what would happen later on would be the fault of Jessica herself. No one saw it coming, not even Jessica.
Jessica was nothing more than an innocent bystander in Rachel’s plans. Even thinking about it now I don’t think that Rachel ever saw Jessica for who she really was. She just saw an easy getaway from the ‘rut’ she felt she was in. It was her test to prove that she loved me and that it wouldn’t change for anyone. Yeah, sounds stupid in your head and trust me, it’s worse when it’s actually followed through.
I still blame myself for this. I feel as if I pushed her away from me and she ran to the first person that was willing to do something stupid too. Jessica was a smart girl and refused to be apart of this…at first anyways. Somehow she got pulled into this when Rachel and I began to compete for Jessica’s attention. Leave up to us to fight over a girl that we really didn’t care for. All we cared for was the attention and rights to say “ha! I got it before you did.” Yeah so what, we’re heartless bitches. That’s how we ended up together; we‘re too much alike.
For almost a year and a half, Rachel and I were together, engaged and damn near close to moving in together. We had our whole lives ahead of us yet we chose to narrow our sights on each other. It’s like, when we were together, the world didn’t have to make sense because I knew I loved her and I thought I knew that she loved me.
You know how you know something is wrong with someone just from the exact moment that you see his or her face? Yeah, that’s how it was this one Monday morning when I came into class and saw Rachel. She didn’t look happy but she didn’t look depressed, more like she just found out her dog was run over or something. But to know Rachel is to be very frustrated with her sometimes. She’s not always the most straightforward person in the world. So we played a game of 20 questions until she finally cracked and told me that she was in a rut and needed to get out for a while and stretch her wings. Well…next time I won’t keep asking what’s wrong.
You have no idea what it does to an easily broken heart to hear that the love of her life doesn’t really love her anymore. I mean, come on, how could I not take it to that level of insecurity? Every word she said seemed to just move around me and I never really absorbed anything else after I heard, “we need to break up for a while.” Cause who wants to listen after hearing those words? You really can’t blame me for tuning her out.
“What the fuck is your problem today? You haven’t said more than four words to me today and those were ‘you’re in my seat.’ You have no reason to be acting like this.”
Oh no, she just didn’t go there did she? Please tell me that bitch just didn’t say I had no reason to be hateful towards her? Did she really just say that out loud? Damn, she did. That bitch. “You know what? Fuck you Rachel, ok? I got every damn right to be this way. I’ve got a broken heart how the fuck else am I suppose to act?” Wait, that’s not enough. Got to find something that will really hurt her. Looking for the kill zone and… “And unlike you, I act like a human and show my emotions. I’m not a heartless bitch.” Bam! I found it. That ought to teach her to start bitching at me. Maybe she’ll learn not to ask me what’s wrong again.
But then she turned things on me and started to cry. Told me all she ever wanted out of life was someone who cared about her and loved her and she knew that I did those things for her but it just wasn’t enough anymore. I was really beginning to hate hearing that it wasn’t enough. It was starting to make me feel less than human. She wanted to fly and I was just caging her down in the mud, or at least that’s how Jessica put it.
Oh yeah, Jessica, the savior of our failed relationship right? The arch angel who was suppose to be on my side and pull through for me and get Rachel to come back to me. Well, some angels fall from their pedestals that we place them on. And Jessica, well Jessica just flat out jumped off of her damn pedestal. She so should have been born with horns cause I still believe she is the devil.
Jessica didn’t see it that way. Hell, after Rachel became her trophy girlfriend, even Rachel didn’t see it my way. I knew for a while that I was losing Rachel to Jessica so I just tried a lot harder to show my love to Rachel. But, and here comes those words again, it just wasn’t enough. I still lost her and Rachel thought that I shouldn’t have been so hateful about it.
It seems as though nobody knew when Rachel and I were together but the whole goddamn world knew it when Jessica stepped into the picture. One girl even told me, “It’s like watching a soap opera. Kind of like ‘All My Children’ where Maggie wants Bianca but won’t admit it and Bianca is still in love with Lena but Lena doesn’t want her.” That hurt me like hell; I like Bianca with Lena and not Maggie…
Since hooking up with Jessica, Rachel didn’t notice me anymore. She had replaced everything that I was in her life with Jessica. All the notes I wrote her, the ones she once vowed to keep forever and show to our kids, was now nothing more than ashes in her backyard. She had replaced them with Jessica’s notes. And the engagement ring, which used to always be on her finger, was now replaced with Jessica’s class ring. And in her heart, where I use to be the only one she loved, was now replaced with Jessica…
Rachel didn’t care about me anymore. It was obvious to everyone, even to the ones who didn’t know either of us that well. Passing comments would be made about how I was going to move far away and she’d say, “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.” Or I would make a quick threat of suicide and she’d say, “I can’t stop you.”
It didn’t always use to be this way. She used to care if I made comments like that. She use to take the time out of her day to talk to me and make me talk my feelings out because she knew there was more than just those comments. But now, now I just seemed to ruin her day by needing her. I was taking time away from Jessica and she didn’t like that. So she pushed me aside for Jessica. Basically, Rachel did the one thing that I cried about and feared about for the whole time we were to together she abandoned me.
I couldn’t talk to her like I use to. Every time I had enough guts to talk to her, she wasn’t there for me. She was out running around with Jessica because Jessica had a car. Whatever it was that Jessica was to her, I would never be that. I would never compete with Jessica so I just gave up.
I gave up on everything. I began to cut myself again. A bad habit that I thought I had broken for almost two years. I was cutting so deep that I had to make homemade stitches just to make sure that I didn’t bleed to death. All the while, Rachel never knew. She never asked why I wore long sleeves even in the summer. Even though she should have guessed that I was cutting myself again. But like I said, she was too involved with Jessica to even notice that I was thinning down. I wasn’t eating but maybe three times a week and I was either not sleeping enough or sleeping so much that I would be late for school. I was a complete and total mess.
But then came a day that was both sad and beautiful to me. Too bad I wasn’t there to see it personally…
A friend of Rachel’s, Lisa, started to notice the change in Rachel. She often questioned Rachel what was wrong but Rachel just cried and said nothing. Then the bruises came. First small ones on her arms, then there was a day when she came in with her right eye bruised up. That’s when everyone looked to Jessica for the explanation.
“Yeah, ok? I fucking hit her alright!” Jessica screamed down a near empty hallway one afternoon to Lisa. “What do you expect? All she fucking talks about is Jenny and it’s driving me crazy!”
Rachel had the misfortune of hearing that statement. She slammed down her books and began to throw a fit right along with Jessica. “God damn Jessica! She was the first love of my life!”
“How am I supposed to compete with that? How do you compete with a ghost Rachel?” Jessica yelled, tears now rolling violently down her face. I suppose this was a fight that had been coming for a while now. I was just sad that I missed it or that I was the cause of it….either way I was sad about it.
“She’s dead Jessica! You’re not supposed to compete! You’re supposed to help me get through this. You’re supposed to be there for me. My ex-girlfriend, the first love of my life, slit her wrist two weeks ago today! Today! And I know it was because of you and me. This is all my fault.”
Jessica’s heart softened. How could she have yelled at Rachel like that when she knew what I use to be to her? Now she felt bad. “I’m sorry baby. I’m really sorry. I just…I’m sorry.” Jessica reached out her hand to place on Rachel’s shoulder but the girl pulled away.
“No! I’m not going to let you talk about her like that. It was one thing the way you spoke about her when she was alive but I’ll be damned if I let you talk about her when she’s dead! This is both of our faults. I hope that weighs on your head forever.” Rachel snatched up her belongings. She began storming down the hall only to turn around and say one last thing to Jessica, “Goodbye forever.”
But no one ever figured that I would have tried to kill myself over Rachel. Guess no one really knew me then. Do I regret any of it? No, I would do it all again to have that time with Rachel again. ‘I would trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.’ I love that quote, probably because it seems to fit now. I wouldn’t trade in the time I had with Rachel for anything else in this world. I just wished it could have lasted longer than it did.
Do I wish that I hadn’t have slit my wrists? Not really. Everybody got what they wanted in the end. Well, everybody except for me. Still, sometimes I wish I could live in the shadows of yesterday when we things were normal and right…
