Two Among Billions - A Short Story

Oh my darling. You were my whole world and I was yours. The things I had planned for us to do together, they spanned years, decades, our own little eternity of just you and me.

            All that lost time is what hurts me the most.

            You and I were going to do so many great things together. I say great, you and I were never going to make headlines, we were just two among billions, going about our daily lives, but even daily lives would have been perfect to me.

            I really wish you and I had got to live our boring normal lives.

            I love you so much. I know I shouldn’t, especially not now that you’re gone from my life and even the memory of you burns like the brightest star. But how could I forget you, how could I not think about you for even a second?

            I only knew you existed for 6 months, and I’m afraid that I only loved you for 4, but that love was so much more intense than anything I’ve ever felt for anyone before. My love for you could have burned out suns and galaxies, and still there would have been more of me to give.

            It was supposed to be you and me, together forever, us against the world and all those other clichés.

            Why did you leave me? I would have been so good to you. I know I wasn’t prepared, I know I’m young, but I loved you so much.

            Did I take too long to love you? Is that why you left me? I’m sorry, I feel so ashamed when I think back on how much the prospect of you frightened me, but I truly never expected you.

            I had been kicked out by my parents, I was couch surfing with people I barely knew, drinking and drugs, parties and anonymous sex every night. When I finally sobered up long enough to notice you, my first action was immediate panic.

            I was halfway to the clinic before I really knew what I was doing. Maybe that would have been better for you? To have just quietly and quickly let you go, before I could be attached to you, before my body could fail you and bring you, cold and so still, into a world you will never get to know.

            My baby. That day at the clinic, I realised that I couldn’t go through with it. I’ve been saying for years that a child would not, could not be for me. I wouldn’t be good for a child, I’m too fucked up, too into alcohol, drugs and stability? The only thing stable about me is the ground I walk on.

            I always said that if I ever got pregnant I would have an abortion before the piss had dried on the stick.

            I still believe in it. It’s still the right choice for so many potential mothers. It should have been the choice I made. But I just… couldn’t. I was too afraid that it would hurt. Ridiculous I know, coming from the girl who stabs needles in herself for fun, but I was afraid of the pain.

            Or maybe that was just the excuse I made to myself.

            Either way, I didn’t go through with it.

            I was terrified of you, of what you meant for me and the lifestyle I wanted to keep living but knew wasn’t an option anymore. I was terrified of who I would be sober, that person was a stranger to me. The 16 year old in the photos was a totally different person to the 22 year old I am now.

            That girl had hopes, dreams. A glowing future. She was going to be a Doctor, or a Lawyer, it had been decided at a very young age that she would do something amazing with her life.

            But then she had discovered, alcohol, drugs, parties. She ‘fell in with a bad crowd’ as the parents would tut and sigh at her, as she ambled down the high street, too blasted to even notice their reproving stares, their judgemental faces.

            Her grades had slipped, and before she knew it, she was education-less, job-less, homeless.

            Worthless.

            But I would have changed. I was going to change for you. I’d already made plans. I took all my piercings out, except for my nose ring, and dyed my hair back to its natural colour. I kicked the drugs, I went cold turkey as soon as I knew about you, spending three weeks fucking miserable, face down on a friend’s bathroom floor, sweating, shaking and vomiting up anything that wasn’t water. I’d stopped drinking and smoking too, chewing endless amounts of gum, scratching the inside of my left arm to ribbons as a distraction from the nicotine cravings.

            Then I went back to my parents. My loving family, who had believed so much of me, who loved me the same way I loved you. Whose hearts I broke when I stole from them to fund my drug habit. Who kicked me out ‘for my own good,’ tears rolling down my mums cheeks and my dad looking weary, stressed and old far before his time.

            I was a fuck up, but you were going to be a new generation, someone who would be worthy of their love and belief.

            They loved you so much. I turned up on their door step, like a wraith, a figure of bone and shadow, and they pulled me straight back into their loving protection.

            Because of you.

            My mum sang soft lullabies that I hadn’t heard since my own childhood, her soft voice almost hauntingly beautiful. My dad built your crib, a flat-pack thing from Ikea with a million instructions and three days of colourful curses emitting from the spare bedroom.

            The spare bedroom that should have been yours. That we had spent two days carpeting, painting and decorating, music and laughter filling the little house I had grown up in for the first time in so long.

            They were desperately looking forward to being grandparents, and I was just ecstatic to have them back in my life.

            And it was all possible because of you.

            But you’re not here.

            Instead I sit here, alone in the darkened ‘spare’ bedroom that will now forever just be spare. The bedroom that is taken up with your crib that you never slept in. The Moses basket I never got to put you in. The cabinet filled with teddy’s you’ll never cuddle, or drool on. The wardrobe I had packed full of tiny little rompers and outfits that you’ll never wear.

            The home that I was only able to come back to because of you.

            I am sorry, my little one. I would have loved you until the Earth stopped turning. I would have done anything to see you succeed in life. To see you happy, healthy, my beautiful baby girl.

            But even after all that struggle, the weeks of getting clean, the months that I cradled you, shielded you from all harm, housed you inside me.

            I still wasn’t good enough.

            My love for you couldn’t save you, and my body failed you.

            My life is not worth what yours could have been. I desperately wish the Doctor’s had let me die, if not for you to live, then at least to let me stay with you, forever.

            Now I must go on without you, though I know not how I could possibly do that.

            You were my entire world, my reason for getting clean, for becoming a real functioning person again. Now I wish I had the drugs, their soothing ability to make the pain fade away.

            I considered it. Going back to that life, that awful miserable life where I ceased to be a person and all I cared about was the next high and where it would come from.

            It seems so much easier. So much less painful.

            But I can’t. You’re not even here, you never really were and still I want to be better for you. I want you to be proud of me.

            I want you to be happy that I’m your mum.

            So I’ll stay clean, even though the pain of not getting to keep you is tearing me apart.

            I’ll be the daughter my parents wanted, because they deserve better, and they wanted you to live as much as I did.

            I’ll keep living when all I really want to do is join you.

            I’ll make something of my life, so that when I see you again, I’ll have so many stories to tell you.

            We’ll create our own little forever. I just have to be patient.