My eyes get a little misty as I look at her, silently thanking her for all she’d done for me. I hate the look of pity I see in her eyes. Much like how everyone had been looking at me since last year.
“Thank you so much,” I whisper, hating the break in my voice. I’d cried so much the past year that you would think that my tear glands were dried up.
Look, Van. I know you’ve been through a lot in the past month. Taking care of a cancer patient while working every day is no walk in the park. And in the hospital, we try to be supportive. It’s been three months already since she died.
There may not be a time stamp on grief. You’re going to have to decide whether you want it to consume you, or whether you want to learn to live with it. It ain’t easy trust me, I know. Losing a mother never is. But, honey, drinking? It’s never the answer.
“I know,” I say to her. It was the first time I’d gotten called out for my drinking problem ever since my mother passed away from breast cancer three months ago.
I thought I had a lead on it.
Turns out, I didn’t.
She nods her head at me while I hang mine down in shame, feeling like the greatest disappointment there ever was. And then she said it;
“She would not have wanted this for you. I know that for a fact.”
I break down into another fit of sobbing.
The reason I’d run to the bottle was that it dulled the ache. It dulled the pain so I wouldn’t see her everywhere I go, and in everything I did. There was just a dark haze.
Now that the haze was drifting off, I was seeing it clearly; my grief; and it felt like an insurmountable, tangible thing. Eating deep into my soul with no end in sight.
“She worked for you to excel, Vanessa. And she would weep if she saw what you were doing now that she’s gone.”
I walked out of the hospital with only a box of a few of my stuff in it. Mostly stuff that reminded me of her. My scrubs and other hospital supplies had been abandoned. I had my books with me as well. And the heaviest heart as I walked down the busy street to my apartment.
The door was unlocked when I walked in, and I was almost relieved to see my boyfriend Nate sitting down in the living room. I did not want to be alone right now.
I gave no thought to why he was here, seeing as he was supposed to be at work.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” I said, trying to force enough enthusiasm into my voice so that I don’t sound like a lost cause.
He gets up immediately after he hears my voice. He’d been so deep in thought that he had not heard me walk in.
“Hey.” He approached me and took the box from my hand. “How’d it go?” he looked like he’d be anywhere but here, but I don’t pay any attention to it.
I knew Nate had been very distant lately, and I knew it was because of my distance as well. I’d been so wrapped up in my grief that I’d not given him any attention. We hadn’t had sex in almost five months.
“So, I lost my job.” I said in a falsely upbeat voice, “But I still have my license. So I can apply to other places.”
This felt like a wake-up call and although I don’t see myself crying to sleep every night, stopping soon; at least, I was going to be a better girlfriend to him.
“Oh, that’s great. That’s good.”
“Right?” I say, leaning up to kiss him, but he leans slightly away.
I stopped when I saw just how uncomfortable he was. He was looking anywhere but at me. I knew then that something was wrong.
“What? What is it? Did you lose your job too?” I asked, the joke falling flat when he does not even crack a smile.
“I need to tell you something?” He was fidgeting as he spoke and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He rakes his hands through his blonde hair, something I had done millions of times in the past three years since we’d been dating.
“Okay? Spit it out.”
“I’m in love with someone else.”
He said the words so hurriedly that I did not understand them at first. And when I looked into his face. In his bright blue eyes, I saw what I’d failed to notice when I’d first walked in.