A Beautiful Mess: a Collection of Short Stories by Ali Berlinski

Author:Ali Berlinski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2013-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Part III- Everything Ends

Winter break ended a week later, forcing me to return to New York and leave my sister. Back in the city, time crept along. The one-year anniversary of Kenny’s death came and went. A year of my life had gone by. The closest thing to acceptance that I got was accepting that life pretty much sucked. In fact, things had gotten worse. However, when a person hits rock bottom, he or she has nowhere to go but up. This was the pep talk I gave myself each morning as I got out of bed.

Then late that March, I went to a friend’s birthday party and to my surprise, enjoyed myself. As monumental as the moment was for me, nothing particularly extraordinary happened. I smiled, and that smile was followed by a laugh, a genuine guttural laugh. Each day after that got a little easier, since being happy didn’t seem like such a chore.

To be sure, nothing about my situation had improved. Kenny was still dead. After the hospital, my sister started seeing a therapist regularly and taking medication. Even so, Monika continued to act out and put herself in danger. The only thing I had going for me was that I gathered enough sense to break up with Sean. It sounds cruel to say, after all we went through together, but ending a destructive relationship was for the best. A few months after we had broken up, I found out that he actually did cheat on me. By that point it didn’t matter, but it provided some comfort knowing I wasn’t entirely crazy. While things were still by no means perfect, I finally believed they could and would change.

That December I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and ignore the world. Seeing Monika so sick made me feel weak and helpless. If anything, my actions were motivated by fear of losing someone else I loved. She was my reason to fight, to get better. Sometimes that’s all we need: a reason to be better than we are.

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