—LilyI flip to the next page, but it’s blank. That was the last time I ever
wrote to Ellen.
I also never heard from Atlas again, and a huge part of me never
blamed him. He almost died at the hands of my father. There’s not
much room for forgiveness there.
I knew he survived and that he was okay, because my curiosity has
sometimes gotten the best of me over the years and I’d find what I
could about him online. There wasn’t much, though. Enough to let
me know he’d survived and that he was in the military.
I still never got him out of my head, though. Time made things
better, but sometimes I would see something that would remind me of
him and it would put me in a funk. It wasn’t until I was in college for a
couple of years and dating someone else that I realized maybe Atlas
wasn’t supposed to be my whole life. Maybe he was only supposed to
be a part of it.
Maybe love isn’t something that comes full circle. It just ebbs and
flows, in and out, just like the people in our lives.
On a particularly lonely night in college, I went alone to a tattoo
studio and had a heart put in the spot where he used to kiss me. It’s a
tiny heart, about the size of a thumbprint, and it looks just like the
heart he carved for me out of the oak tree. It’s not fully closed at the
top and I wonder if Atlas carved the heart like that on purpose.
Because that’s how my heart feels every time I think about him. It just
feels like there’s a little hole in it, letting out all the air.
After college I ended up moving to Boston, not necessarily because
I was hoping to find him, but because I had to see for myself if Boston
really was better. Plethora held nothing for me anyway, and I wanted
to get as far away from my father as I could. Even though he was sick
and could no longer hurt my mother, he still somehow made me want
to escape the entire state of Maine, so that’s exactly what I did.
Seeing Atlas in his restaurant for the first time filled me with so
many emotions, I didn’t know how to process them. I was glad to see
that he was okay. I was happy that he looked healthy. But I would be
lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit heartbroken that he never tried to
find me like he promised.