• As It Used To Be


    It had been a few weeks since the accident, and I was still in the hospital. The nurses came and went like sunrises, and visitors were always strewn about the room. Mounds of potted plants covered any open area, and despite the signs of love, I felt alone. He broke up with me on the way home. I remember it like it was yesterday.


    “You can’t just tell me what’s right for me,” he snapped. He took another whiff of cigarette smoke. “It’s not right for you to tell me what’s right.”


    “Think about all the times you’ve told me what to do! You’ve always been doubting my dreams,” I snapped back, mascara running in long lines down the apples of my cheeks. I knew I was blood red, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like hurting him, even though I knew he had hurt me.


    “I’m through with you and your dreams,” he put his hands behind his head and shut his eyes for a few moments. Then he looked dead in my eye, and said, “Why don’t you ever take a chance to enjoy what’s around you? Just, ask them where they’re going and meet up with them later.”


    That hit me hard. It was the very thing I said to him when we first went out. He had to meet his parents somewhere, and I told him to ask them where they were going. We could meet up with them later. I loved him too much to let go.


    Next thing I knew, I was blinded by two white lights, my ears busted out by the horn of a semi truck, and I was in an ambulance, with him whispering in my ear. He didn’t mean it, and I knew he didn’t, because he said it so many times, time and time again he was praying for me to get better. But I knew he would never take me or my dreams back.


    After the accident, I was in the hospital for months. I needed my rest, after all. I had cracked open my skull and received whiplash from his air bags. Plus, my left eardrum had been busted out. My eyes were taped shut for a surgery of some kind at one point, and that’s when I felt more alone than ever.


    After the surgery, I saw him. He visited me. He told me everything would be alright. But, a nurse had told me different.


    “So, he told you, eh?” She asked. She spoke as if speaking to a child, plastering a smile on her face. I must’ve looked confused, because she went on. “That he never liked you?”


    “What?” I shook my head and rested it in my hands. “No, he told me everything would be alright.” She looked at me with a sense of silly and a bit of strange.


    “Well, he told all of us in the lobby that he had come to see the girl he had hurt. He said that he never really liked you until you were hurt, that’s when he realized how much he needed you.”


    So now I wait in the hospital, waiting for him to visit again. If he does, I will tell him how much I’ve always liked him. He might be confused, but that’s okay. I’ll tell him, “Just because I can’t hear doesn’t mean I can’t hear what you say about me.” He’ll smile, he’ll hold me in his arms, and everything will be as it used to be.


    As it used to be.