Page 57 of Come Home to Me

I drop to my hands and knees and pick up the little blue pills scattered across the worn carpet. One by one, I slide them back into the bottle until there’s only one remaining in the palm of my hand. I stare at the thing, my heart in my throat, totally aware my future hangs in this moment.

It’d be so easy to toss the pill into my mouth, swallow it down, and slide back into a life that feels familiar, dull, empty, devoid of feeling.

So easy.

But sometimes what’s easy isn’t what’s best. Sometimes we have to fight for what we want. And damn it, I want to be the woman I got a glimpse of in these last few weeks. I don’t want her to be a memory. I want her to be me.

I stand and walk into the bathroom. Drop the pills into the toilet and flush them away before tossing the empty bottle in the trash.

Frank might be done with me. He might be willing to throw me away for no good reason, but I’m not. It’s time I realized I’m worth fighting for. And if I won’t fight for myself, how can I expect anyone else to fight for me?

I spend the rest of the night doodling and planning. The world is open to me right now. I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want. There’s a beach in California with my name on it. Maybe there’s a job there, too. Or, my family is missing me in Ohio and my brothers’ friends run a business. Maybe they’re hiring.

I owe Frank a lot of money for the repairs to my car and for the airfare. Regardless as to what happened between us, I need to figure out a way to pay him back. I can’t have that debt hanging over my head.

As thoughts come to me, I jot them down. The more I define my plans, the more answers I find to the questions in my mind, the better I feel, though I’m a long way from feeling good. Most importantly, I’m proud of myself for flushing those pills down the toilet. While they may really help someone who uses them properly, I don’t use them properly.

I use them to hide.

I use them to run.

I use them to ignore how much I’m hurting, how disappointed I am in my life.

In myself.

I use them to quiet the voice in the back of my head. The one that continually wonders if this is all there is to life. The one that constantly tells me there has to be more than the tedium of day to day obligations.

It’s been there forever. When I was little, I told my momma about it, and she said it was the voice of greatness. She tried to tell me that greatness has a cost. That I couldn’t just sit around and wait for it to come to me, but that I would need to chase it down. To listen to the whispers of my heart and run, run, run after the things I want.

I only ever heard the first part of what she told me. And so, I sat around, waiting for greatness as that whispering voice kept reminding me that I was worth so much more than a boring job, too many bills, and a small apartment. That voice got louder, angrier, more insistent. Instead of taking my mom’s advice and chasing down the things I needed to feel happy, I settled on medicating that voice right out of existence.

That stops now.

When that voice speaks, I’ll listen. When it commands me to follow my passion, to take a chance, to push past the hard parts, damn it, I’m gonna.

But first, I have to decide what I’m going to do about Frank.

If he cheated on me…

…and that’s a very big if, because I can’t wrap my head around that being the truth of the situation…

…sure, he said he did, but things just don’t add up and doubt spins through my memories of our conversation…

But if he cheated on me, then things between us have to end. As much as I care about him, as much as I think we could be amazing together, I’m worth more than betrayal.

But if he didn’t cheat on me, I’m still not ready to give up on him. He said some terrible things, hurt me in a way I swore no one would ever hurt me again. Once upon a time, when my father said terrible things, I walked away, never once looking back, and have worn those scars on my heart ever since. I owe it to myself to try a little harder this time. I owe it to myself to stand up and fight.

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