Falling Leaves Will Cover My Grief

I can still hear it, the shrill shouts of the man I was weeks ago from marrying. We practiced our vows, and he wove the most beautiful story, a story so beautiful you could make a movie out of it, and when he said I Do, the picture of our future together was sealed in my mind's eye.

A week later, he asked if I would stay with him forever. When I said yes, his gaze went down, and he said that he had been embezzling from the company he worked at. And then he had the gall, the gall, to believe that whispering it would make it less true; that me saying I would stay with him forever was now a promise, and breaking that promise was more destructive than the crime of embezzling itself.

I believed in the man with the eloquent vows, so I stayed.

Two years ago, we both made a promise that we would never lie to each other. Given the fact that my fiancé had been lying about embezzling, I did not feel bad about what I was about to do. I waited for the sound of his even breathing to fill the room, and slowly eased myself off the edge of my bed.

For a brief moment, guilt crept into my heart, covering my soul and gripping it, trying to guide me back to bed. I could just go back to bed, could pretend I never heard those words from him it all, bask in the domesticity of the life I saw when he read me his vows. But that life would never come. How long, before he was tracked down, before the cops knocked on their door and led him out in handcuffs, leaving me alone with broken dreams on a doorstep? No, I would do this and eventually the guilt would fade.

I grasped the phone and gradually closed the door behind me, the sound of my heart beating in my ears. Grabbing a chair from the kitchen, I sat down and pressed at a set of familiar numbers, muscle memory taking over as my hands shook and my eyes slowly started to fill up with tears.

At the sound of my friend's worried voice my heart settled and I finally felt I could breathe, the guilt easing up for a moment. As the voice grew more anxious, hurling rapid fire questions about why I was calling at '3 am, dude, are you okay?'.I began to feel... stupid. The image of my future didn't feel so clear anymore, and my brain couldn't sort through the chaos with my friend's yelling on the other side. I breathed out through my nose, asked if I could stay at her house for the night, waited with baited breath, and hung up as soon as she said yes.

As a photo of my fiancé lit up my phone screen, I was overcome with a fury so great it overtook all the other emotions I was feeling. Was he embezzling back then too, living this double life, charming me with fanciful words and the promise of a white picket fence lifestyle while stealing money that wasn't his to begin with? I wanted vengeance, I wanted him to know what it felt like to be lied to for five years, to have a dream and see the person you loved most shatter it in their palms. I would never have that domestic life, at least not with him, and he would never have it all, the money and the girl, skating away scot free with stolen money.

I called another number, and once again, waited, until I heard the booming voice of my fiancé's boss on the other side. He asked, understandably, why I was calling at this time, and I told him what my fiancé had confessed to me just hours ago. The man thanked me, and I sat in silence, staring at the wall, mourning the revival of guilt in my heart. When I turned around and saw my fiancé(not husband, never husband), shaking at the front of our bedroom door, eyes wide with anger, fury, betrayal, and even a small amount of understanding, I walked out of the house.

He followed after me, shouting all the while, but numbness was starting to kick in, and the feeling of the cold air on my face neither alleviated nor worsened my condition. I did not look back, I can say proudly, because people in movies look back when they are leaving someone worth something behind, and for all that I was losing by leaving my fiancé, I might gain so much more.

Memories of my mother telling me to never walk in the dark unattended flooded sent warning signs to me that failed to stop my feet from moving further and further away from the house. What had depending on someone else done for me, besides crush my dreams and bring me grief?

After a night of so many emotions and voices I could not push out, it was nice to hear the sounds of nature and silence around me. The birds did not ask me why I dragged my feet as if I was carrying a weight upon my shoulders, the leaves did not ask why I carried myself further into the darkness of the trees. Morbidly, I wondered what would happen if I froze to death here, but the thought pushed itself out as quickly as it came. I would not die from this, I would not let the guilt and the fury and the numbness become me. I would listen to the sounds of the breeze, vent to the uncaring stars, and go to my friend's house.

In the midst of all these turbulent emotions, I tripped and fell into a pile of leaves on the ground. The fury and the embarrassment I was expecting did not come as the moments passed. I felt... safe, in these leaves, even as a pinprick of fear in the back of my head told me to get up and leave. When I sat back up, I dusted off my pants, and walked out of the park with something that felt like hope.