Conclusion

A broken heart is never easy. You wake up one morning, seemingly whole, but inside there’s a pain that cannot be described in any way. There’s a pit in your stomach, the feeling of dread all throughout the day, the ache in the heart and the constantly running mind, asking all sorts of questions and thinking of all kinds of theories: what if, I should have, I should have not, he’s such a jerk, how can he leave me like this, what went wrong, etc, etc.

But it is not necessarily complicated. It is painful, yes, but broken hearts are like migraines — it hurts a whole lot and it makes you want to stop working, but with proper care and medication, one can surpass it and see it as a thing of a past. and maybe even laugh about it. The thing one must do after experiencing a bout of heartbreak is to cry about it and then move on.

Carla cried. She cried right after she left Starbucks that afternoon, she cried when she got home. She cried to Julie when they met up, she cried to her friends who know about the entire thing. She cried about how stupid she felt when she said those words and how stupid she was for thinking too much. When she saw Tom with Kat one day accidentally, she found herself crying in the comfort room of their office. She cried her heart out.

After her crying sessions, she distanced herself from Tom. She threw away the dried daisy, she deleted all  messages and archives of chats in her computer. Carla was civil with Tom during meetings, talking to him when she needs to, but otherwise, she stayed away.

There were days when she’d miss him so much that she almost sent him a message, to ask if they could talk. There were times when she’d remember all their conversations and all the things they did and it would make her wish that none of it happened.

“He’s not worth it,” Julie would quip when Carla told her about these feelings.

And so Carla didn’t. It wasn’t like they broke up or anything anyway.

The thing that hurt Carla the most is how Tom never said anything. How he never tried to approach her about what happened, how he doesn’t seem to be thinking of Carla at all. No contact whatsoever, like whatever friendship they had never existed. It wasn’t that he was cold to her; it was just like he never acknowledged what happened.

Carla moved on.

Eventually, she heard that Tom and Kat became an official couple. The news was expected, but it still stung Carla a bit, but in a way, she was happy too. Then Tom left the company. He sent a general goodbye email to everyone and Carla wondered if he thought of contacting her before he left. He was still always online and for a moment it felt like his online presence was beckoning Carla to send him a message.

But still, she didn’t.

It took Carla a few more months to finally feel normal again, at least as normal as she can be after everything that happened. She never really forgot about Tom, but she accepted that he is one  mystery that she will never be able to figure out. If anything, Tom made the past year very interesting.

But it’s over.

Until one day.

A flower on her desk greeted Carla when she got to work.

A single, bright yellow daisy.

[588 words]

Tags: 26, fiction, migraine series, third person