The Day My Heart Stopped Beating

“What’s even the point?”

Those words will ring in my head until the day I die.

It was a Thursday. Never had I ever cried as hard as I did that day, alone in my room with the lights off. A silent sobbing, praying that my roommates couldn’t hear my gasps for air as I felt my lungs sinking.

I’ll never forget the crippling pain that filled my chest while tears overflowing from my eyes turned to black pools on my pillow. Those stains are still there; twenty-three dollar mascara doesn’t wash out well.

At that moment, all I wanted to do was lay there and feel like death, feel like I was dying. Because for a moment, I think I did. That was the day I felt my heart stop beating. It was a moment so dull, a moment so completely lifeless, worthless, gone. It was only then that a wave of memories crashed into me, soaking the sleeves of my sweatshirt just the way my jeans had been ruined that day on the beach.

Normally, I would have turned on the sparkling Christmas lights that lined the edges of my room, because winter’s sun had already set, turning my room into a blackened abyss. That February went on to become the darkest I’d ever seen, and I’m not sure the sun came out again until spring.

Any other day, the minor chords of a piano and somber voice would flow through my speakers, easing my eyes into creating waterfalls that would trickle down the curves and crevices of my face. Today though, the dams were breached and there was nothing that could control the tempered tide. Pink pillows soon became a ratty, gray color that almost matched my patterned sheets that he’d once found himself tangled in.

My chest was on fire and my stomach strangled; my fists clenched so hard that my fingers went numb. At this point, I was crying due to the tension infiltrating each and every muscle in my tired body. Now soggy pillows muffled my screams, my cries for help.

Stop. Stop. It wouldn’t go away, I couldn’t stop. It was as though my body and mind had agreed to no longer work in conjunction, to stop working entirely. Now, I had become tiny, crumbled bits and pieces that were meant to fit together, but instead were scattered all over my cluttered floor. No matter how hard I tried to quickly glue each piece together, one would fall off before the next was in place.

In a matter of minutes, my life had changed forever.

I stared at the message, written in a gray bubble on my phone screen, wiping away the small splatters made from the river running down my face. The laughter coming from the kitchen was quickly drowned out by my heavy breaths. My eyes scanned the dark room for some sort of familiarity, while my hands searched for the tiny stuffed giraffe that served as my last remains of him, only to clutch it against my pounding, burning chest and slam my face into the sheets once more.

My eyes lifted to gaze at the message once again. “What’s even the point?”

Maybe he was right all along.