I couldn’t get a goddamn thing done right. Every single little task that had become rote from so much repetition somehow became hard, made me as unskilled as a babe.
I brewed coffee too weak.
I sliced my hand while chopping potatoes.
I slammed the hammer into my own thumb instead of the fence post I was attempting to mend.
Everything was taking two or three tries.
My body was taking a beating.
And I deserved every last minute of the frustration, of the pain.
I earned it.
I was such a fuck.
Not for making her go.
I was convinced that was right.
But for being too chickenshit to watch her go. I deserved that pain – watching her walk away from me.
I earned that too.
But I had been a coward, bounding off into the woods with my dogs, punishing my body with a run like I hadn’t done in years, like I could somehow outrun the urge to turn back, go to her, tell her I didn’t mean a single word of it, tell her that I wanted her to stay.
I’d fucking kill for her to stay.
Right there in my bed.
Right there at my side.
Because it was the only time in my entire fucking life that the past was gone, my demons weren’t there screaming in my ear, reminding me of all the awful things I had done in my time.
Because she made everything go quiet.
Because I would give an arm to have that forever.
To have her forever.
But that was selfish.
I’d tried to ignore it.
It started that first night, after the greenhouse, after we had mended things, after she had shared herself with me.
That night, curled up against me content as a kitten, it happened.
The nightmares came back.
They’d been gone.
All during our rift, even a little before then.
They’d left her alone.
Until she was with me.
But I ignored it.
Figured it was a freak thing.
But it got worse.
Night by night.
She was having the kinds of nightmares that made her body writhe, made sweat trickle down her body. Then, as the nights went on, made her cry out, scream out.
There was no mistaking it.
No wondering.
About what had happened to her.
Not as I sat up and listened to her scream, cry, beg.
My blood turned cold as I tried to reach out and she shrieked to get off her, not to touch her.
But then she would wake up with no memory of it, would smile at me, kiss me, reach for me.
I would let it go.
Which was maybe a flaw.
Wanting her so much that I overlooked that something was wrong. At a deep level. A core level.
I even tried to tell myself that even if there was a crack in her, that it was okay. That I had a crack in me as well. And I was doing alright.
Though, the truth was that I never faced my problems. I ran from them. But they always caught up.
And it was wrong to wish that same fate to her. To never truly heal. To always live with that fracture.
Just because I wanted her.
Just because I didn’t want to have to go through my days without her warmth again.
It was wrong.
Unfair.
She deserved to be whole again. To live a life that didn’t have her constantly running from her demons, but always finding them right at her heels.
She needed to go.
She needed to get help. The professional kind. Maybe if she was more open to it, if she was allowed to share, not under a gag by a government who didn’t want the world to know their deeds, maybe if she gave it a real chance, they could help her. Guide her through the pain instead of hiding from it.
She had a chance to be happy.
A whole kind of happy.
And once she got to that place where she could go a night without it coming back because she faced it, she did the work, she learned to move on, she could find someone again.
Someone without demons. Someone who could give her a life in a world not surrounded by trees, hiding from the whole world.
My stomach burned at the idea.
Jealousy wasn’t something I had known before, but it became my constant companion those days following Meadow leaving.
Sometimes, in low moments, I punished myself with it. Why? I wasn’t sure. But I did it. Thinking about her with someone else, settled down, building a family. Something I could never have with her.
It was masochistic.
But, somehow, that pain was better than the pain of the loss.
At least for a few minutes here and there.
She was still everywhere even though I had effectively cleared out all the things that had been lying around that were explicitly hers.
But her smell was in my shirts.
And I found myself wearing the same rotation of shirts for days because I didn’t want to wash away her scent from the others.
Her presence was in the sad bleating of the twice motherless Gadget, in the long, howling whines of Captain who refused to get off the couch where she had spent so much time with him. Hell, it was even in the circling runs Red made around the yard, as if looking for her ankles to peck at.