Our Tragedy

I was driving for about two hours when I finally calmed down.

At first, my hand was shaking, my heart was racing and I wasn’t blinking so much, I stayed in there for about twenty minutes until I finally started the car. The streets were almost empty, the sky was getting darker and darker, I had no idea where I was driving to. My phone was ringing every ten minutes, messages notifications were popping all the time, the sound of the phone was fading away more and more as I was driving.

For the first time ever I wasn’t worried about what others would think about me.

I never thought that I would be the kind of person that just enters the car and start driving with no destination in mind but after that morning… The radio was off, but still, my mind was too noisy, so I drove.

After seven years I thought that the entire mess was over, that I was able to start all over. I moved to another town, I saw a different perspective on life. I was finally getting better. Living.

Life isn’t that simple, so, the past came after me, or … did I come for this again?

I got a job, waitress, at the coffee house across the street of the company I was dreaming about, work there was my ultimate goal, be a photographer there, so I worked harder every day. I saved money to buy a new camera, I did all I could.

In my third week at the new job I met a guy, Taylor, who showed there early and ordered five chicken sandwiches, I was the only waitress there, making some extra hours, I was shocked. Later I found out he was ordering and saving it in his suitcase.

Taylor told me that he was going there since my first day there, he was building the courage to ask me out. That day, he did it, we talked, there wasn’t any customer left at the coffee shop. I rejected him. 

He was really nice, funny and gentle, but I couldn’t accept. I just had left my entire life behind because of a huge love drama. He took it fine, but still, she showed up at the coffee house every day, he wasn’t forcing anything, but he was there, and I was kind of happy to see him every day. 

A couple of months later I finally accepted his invite. We went out and we end up dating, he asked to be his girlfriend, I thought I wasn't ready, but I said yes, it was the best decision, at the time. We dated for a long time, we were having a great time together, then his birthday was coming. 

I was cleaning Taylor’s apartment for his surprise party, I found by accident a box, it was black and had doodles in white all over. I would never open something that isn’t mine, so I didn’t. While cleaning his room I left it the box at the bed, I was cleaning under her when I moved a little bit too strong and the box fell, letters were covering the floor, I tried to get it all back fast but I read my name on one of then. I started smiling, but suddenly a bad feeling filled my heart. It could be good or bad. Anyways, I kept taking the letters, one after another and all of them were addressed to me, my name was on all of them, and there were a lot of envelopes, some of them were with yellowish paper.

I finally got the last one, putting it all on the box. Or I thought it was the last one. While leaving the room I found another envelope, and it had a date, it was from before we even met. I was confused, I decided to open, it had my name after all.

“Stella, I would never do anything to hurt you. I really like you. I was counting the days to see you, I genuine lost my flight, but I didn’t try to get another ticket, I left because I was scared to finally meet you. I lied about so many things. I’m really sorry.”

The letter was longer, with so many excuses, I can even remember all of them. It was about the first time James promised to visit me. My legs were wobbly, I was furious, but didn’t even knew why. James was Taylor? Taylor was James? What was going on? The only way of finding out what was that would be to read all the letters.

I took the box back and start looking for the dates on every envelope, I read it, one after another, date after date. Taylor was James, the guy a met years back, he knew me before, he wrote so many times that he loved me, but of course, he never shows this in the right way. 

When I first met James, seven years ago, he reached out to me because of a photography project I did. I was eighteen, working on an Ice cream shop, the manager asked me to do a photoshoot with models at the store, it worked out really great. I used the pictures on my online portfolio, then James hired me as a freelancer to take pictures of some products and send it for him. It was a real deal, but we started to chat, he told me he was also a photographer and he gave me really important advice on that field.

We ended up turning friends, then one day he asked me out, but the problem was, he was twenty-one and from a town far far away from mine, I had no money at all to fly there and he was working on a big company that wouldn’t allow him to be out of town. I usually would never accept to meet someone I never met before, but he had something that made me trust him so much! We talked every day, at first I liked him and had no idea if he would ever like me back, so he asked me out, we never went out together. 

James and I were friends. That was it. But I still liked him more than that. He started dating a girl he met at a bar, I was happy for them, for him … but I was also jealous. After a couple of weeks they broke up, he said they never had anything compare to how he liked me. He asked me to be his girlfriend and I was confused and really not liking the fact we were on opposite sides of the country, but I said yes. We never saw each other, just pictures, video calls never worked, stupid me, a big red flag.

We were a couple. We kept talking every day, all the time. One day he said he would come to see me, he didn’t. On the day he supposed to arrive I waited for him at the airport for hours, never show up, never call. I came back home and never hear from him again. He had disappeared from every social media, no messages, no calls, nothing at all. No one around me knew about us, and they never had heard of him until this day. 

At the time I was angry, sad, worried. What could possibly have happened to him just … disappear. I called the company he supposed to work for, they never heard of him, I call his cellphone all day, every day, nothing. One week after it all happened my phone rang, it was his number, my heart was beating so fucking fast! I answer a woman was on the other side of the line.

That woman told me he was Jame’s sister and she saw the messages and calls, but she wasn’t able to reach out to me, she was grieving. James had an car accident and died. That’s it. She told me that, she told me she had no idea who was I and where he was going that night. I asked her about his job, she told me he was a freelancer, just like me, he had worked for that company, once, a long time ago, as a freelancer.

I was devasted, I was okay with the fact that she didn’t know me, but … he was … dead? I closed the doors of my heart, I was depressed, but also knew that something about that story was not right. I was digging everything I could about him, searching for all the information I had about him.  His sister never called or answer y calls again. 

That ended there, I never found anything. I was traumatized, confused, didn’t know if he was dead or was a big ass liar.

Those letters just cleared it all for me. James was a lie, Taylor was him. He played me. Did he love me? So why did lie to me? 

I took all the letters and threw them all over his room. I was so mad that I even vandalized his entire room, I stopped there because of the party. Oh, the party! That was a horrible idea, I came back home, took my charger, my purse and left. 

I can’t come back and I’m still driving, where to? I have no idea. Maybe I’m being stupid, but the thing is: I can’t face it all over again. Took so long for me to finally move on, I can’t do it again. Can I?

The thing is, will it ever stop hurting? Should I solve this while I still can?