When Nadia Marsh; a cheerful and popular ice skater, is overtaken by a mystery illness, everything changes.
When everyone around her is training for sectionals; Nadia is house bound, where even the smallest effort leaves her feeling exhausted.
Getti...
"Did some force take you because I didn't pray? Every single thing to come has turned into ashes."
─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ─
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NADIA'S POV:
I hate today.
There is no other way to put it other than today is fucking shit. Today has been filled with grief as I have to mourn the loss of my best friend all over again. I miss my best friend everyday but the days where I have to actually be reminded that he's gone I miss him more. On normal days I can just say to myself that he's gone on holiday for a while or he's doing something else with his time but when it's a day like today, it's impossible to forget he's not here.
I woke up in the morning and something felt different. It felt like everything had been sucked out of me and like I was suffocating in my own skin. I knew it was because of Archie's anniversary as I tend to have panic attacks a lot about what happened, blaming myself for it all, or even hallucinating the phone call I got from his mother the night it happened. For months after his death that phone call was on my mind, waking me up every night as if my mind wanted me to relive the trauma of losing my best friend.
I was about to push the fact it's his anniversary out of the way but I went on my phone and it was a constant reminder. Everyone I follow on instagram had posted on their story about it, even people who he wasn't close to or didn't like because that's what happens when you die- people suddenly seem to give a shit about your existence.
If I were to die today then people would post about me as if I was their best friend and say how much they love me. This was one of the worst things to see just after Archie died in my opinion because who out of them really saw he was struggling?
He was a popular guy, I know that, as he was a part of the hockey squad, and everyone had had some sort of interaction with him, all of them being positive as he was such a ray of sunshine but no one knew him. No one knew how he would come to me on the roof and cry about how he felt like he didn't belong anywhere because he felt so different, how he felt trapped in his own life as he couldn't bring himself to come out to anyone. No one knew who he really was behind the mask he held in front of himself and it annoys me that they think they can get an ounce of attention from his death because they had one photograph from a party with him.
Even I haven't posted about his death, no one has even bothered to message me to ask how I am doing, which would be the number one thing Archie would care about right now, alongside making sure his family are okay, which I did before I came here. I sigh, trying to stop my anger from coming back up at how everyone is an attention seeker in one way or another and go back to my notebook, where I am reading through things my mum has said over the years to try and bring myself some peace.
Peace sounds like a difficult thing to grasp as I will miss this boy for the rest of my life. When he died, he took the part of me that shined along with him and everyday that I have to wake up without him, another piece of my soul will be taken too as I am not me without that boy.
I see the tears drop onto the notebook, smudging the ink across the page and I look up at the moonlight shining through the cracks of the withered away house, knowing that it's Archie casting light on me so he can keep an eye on me, just like he promised he always would.
I got diagnosed yesterday and I can't help but wonder if it was Archie who gave it to me. Maybe he wanted me to be diagnosed so that I could feel at least a bit of closure on this day, or so that I would know that I would be okay.
It's hard to think that I will be okay though as Archie was my soulmate, no matter how much I love Corey, Archie was my person and five years seems like a death sentence, one that I have to live out.
I look back down at the tearstained paper and read, "We are all so sad and yet we all have to do it. When we feel happy, which is a rarity for many, we cling to the feeling. We search for something in everything to find solace in." I had solace with Archie and it was all ripped away from me. I had solace in skating and it was all ripped away from me. I had my healthy, young body and it was all ripped away from me. So now, I cling to Corey and the happiness he brings me, I cling to the way he makes me feel and I will be selfish with him but even he has been ripped away from me now as my brother doesn't want us to be together.
I want to be with Archie and I would be comfortable in dying now but I don't want this illness to win, that is the one thing I won't accept. No matter how much I want to see Archie again, I know it's not my time.
