Page 94 of Hitting the Goal Line
But it did happen again, and again and again, even when I promised myself that I was going to leave before it got worse. Even if I promised myself that I was going to break it off before there was a next time.
I broke the promises I made to myself. I didn’t follow through with my word. I stayed because I kept telling myself it was going to get better, that things were going to change. But things didn’t get better and things didn’t change, if anything, everything got worse.
Ever since Christmas, it’s as if my life has revolved around two things and that is being a nursing student and Elijah. Nothing else. I go from the hospital to classes to Elijah’sapartment and that’s it. A few visits to my own home have been sprinkled in here and there, but only when Blake is at practice or at an away game and even then, Elijah is always with me.
No matter what I do outside of work, Elijah is always with me, dictating the things that I do, the things that I wear, the things that I say to people. No matter who I talk to, whether it be my parents or even Chloe and Eliana, I have to be careful with what I say. If I even mention Blake in some way, or even one of his siblings and Selena, he gets angry with me and I can never calm him down.
Since we got back from his parents, he has hurt me three more times. Three more times that shouldn’t have happened if I had left at the very beginning.
Two were shoves, against the refrigerator and the bathroom door. The last one though, the last one was the turning point and where I finally told myself that it was time to walk away. The last one was a slap across the face. He had shoved me against things and wrapped his hand around my neck, but never actually hit me in any way. The second that he did, all because I had been talking to my dad about us going to a game together, I made up my mind.
I wasn’t going to take it anymore.
I wasn’t going to lose myself any more than I already have, because my boyfriend has an issue with who I’m friends with. I’ve explained to him more times that I can count, that nothing is going on with me and Blake. I’ve told him that I’m fully in this with him and that Blake wouldn’t get in the middle of that, no matter how I might feel about him or felt about him in the past. But no matter what I said, what I did, Elijah wouldn’t listen, or even believe me.
He would just get angry and take it out on me and I can’t take it anymore.
So, I started to put a plan to walk away in motion. I thought about just telling Elijah, of telling him that we were done and to never come near me again, but the fear of what he would do, kept me from doing that. If he got angry with a simple phone call, what would he do if I ended it between us?
I didn't want to find out.
So, I decided that no matter what I did, I was going to do it with caution. Caution also meant I had to take my time.
I didn’t want to but it was necessary.
For weeks, since the hospital and school were the only places that Elijah wouldn’t go with me, I would take some of the stuff I had taken to his place, with me. Clothes, toiletries, anything that could possibly fit in my bag, I would take and sneak it home whenever I got the chance.
Sneaking away to go home shouldn’t be necessary. I should be free to go there whenever I want without any fear, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case.
I didn’t realize just how much stuff I had over at Elijah’s until I was trying to get everything out.
For a solid week, I stressed about how I was going to get everything out.
Thankfully, it seemed like a high power was looking after me because a few days later, Elijah had to go to Springfield for two days for a work conference. One I couldn’t go to. When he told me that, every single cell in my body jumped up in excitement.
The second that he left to the conference, I started packing up all the things that didn’t fit in my work bag and started moving them over. Thankfully, Blake was gone on a stretch of away games, so he wasn’t home to ask any questions.
But I knew I owed him an explanation. A big one.
From the second that I told myself that I wasn’t going to do anything to anger Elijah, my relationship with Blake started to suffer.
I was miserable without my best friend and not seeing him or even talking to him in the way that I wanted to, killed me so much.
So when Elijah left, I thought it would be the perfect time to start repairing the relationship that I started to destroy.
Seeing the smile on Blake’s face when he walked into the apartment and saw what I had planned, was everything that I needed in that moment. It broke my heart that I couldn’t remember when the last time was that he looked at me like that. My heart broke even more when he told me to come back to him.
When I heard those words coming out of his lips, I wanted to scream out how much I loved him. I wanted to tell him that I will always come back to him, because I was his and he owned every single part of me. He always has and he always will, no matter if he didn’t feel the same way.
But in that moment, as I looked into his eyes and I held his face close to mine, I realized something, Elijah was right about something. Blake does look at me a certain way.
Blake looks at me like he loves me in the same way that I love him. I don’t know when he started looking at me like that, but I hope it never goes away.
The second that I saw that look, I vowed to myself that I would follow through with my plan and end things with Elijah once and for all so that I can come back to Blake. Maybe then that we can give this love between us a real shot.
I may have broken the promise to myself, but I won’t break any promise I made to him. I will come back to him. No matter what.
Almost everything that I had at Elijah’s, is back home. There’s nothing that left for me to take back, and if there is, he can fucking keep it. I don’t want it.
