15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

And then the absolute worst.
It had been exactly forty-two days since Atlas left for Boston. I counted every
day like it would help somehow. I was so depressed, Ellen. I still am. People say
that teenagers don’t know how to love like an adult. Part of me believes that,
but I’m not an adult and so I have nothing to compare it to. But I do believe
it’s probably different. I’m sure there’s more substance in the love between two
adults than there is between two teenagers. There’s probably more maturity,
more respect, more responsibility. But no matter how different the substance of a
love might be at different ages in a person’s life, I know that love still has to
weigh the same. You feel that weight on your shoulders and in your stomach
and on your heart no matter how old you are. And my feelings for Atlas are
very heavy. Every night I cry myself to sleep and I whisper, “Just keep
swimming.” But it gets really hard to swim when you feel like you’re anchored
in the water.
Now that I think about it, I’ve probably been experiencing the stages of grief
in a sense. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I was deep
in the depression stage the night of my sixteenth birthday. My mother had tried
to make the day a good one. She bought me gardening supplies, made my
favorite cake, and the two of us went to dinner together. But by the time I had
crawled into bed that night, I couldn’t shake the sadness.
I was crying when I heard the tap on my window. At first, I thought it had
started raining. But then I heard his voice. I jumped up and ran to the
window, my heart in hysterics. He was standing there in the dark, smiling at
me. I raised the window and helped him inside and he took me in his arms and
held me there for so long while I cried.
He smelled so good. I could tell when I hugged him that he’d put on some
much-needed weight in just the six weeks since I’d last seen him. He pulled
back and wiped the tears off my cheeks. “Why are you crying, Lily?”
I was embarrassed that I was crying. I cried a lot that month—probably
more than any other month of my life. It was probably just the hormones of
being a teenage girl, mixed with the stress of how my father treated my mother,
and then having to say goodbye to Atlas.
I grabbed a shirt from the floor and dried my eyes, then we sat down on the
bed. He pulled me against his chest and leaned against my headboard.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“It’s your birthday,” he said. “And you’re still my favorite person. And I’ve
missed you.”