three months later....
I really don't know how to thank you, Anna, in all these two years you've been my painkiller for real, you were there even when I never thought I needed someone by my side, and I'm sorry cause I've been such a bad friend to you but now I'm broke in money, but I'll gift you something big, promise, I told her while staring at her like I was trying to read something deeper behind those calm eyes of hers, and she just looked at me with that same steady expression she always had, like nothing I said could really shake her, and then she replied, "No, you've been just fine, I appreciate you, the way it is," and I swear I almost laughed because it felt strange hearing someone say I was "fine" after all the chaos I had been through, I never really thought I could get to the point of thanking someone especially a girl, damn, but for real when I came back to school this term I decided living alone, I didn't need anyone bugging me anymore, I was done with these motherfuckers, done with the noise, done with pretending I was okay when I wasn't, I wanted silence, I wanted distance, I wanted to disappear inside my own world and not deal with feelings that always ended up breaking me, but Anna, she really surprised me, she didn't respect that decision at all, she didn't step back like I expected people to do, she stayed, not loud, not pushy, just there in a way that felt impossible to ignore, I left everybody behind, even her in a way, even Mary, I pushed them out like I was closing doors I never wanted to open again, but Anna refused to let me be, she would disturb me whenever she felt like something was off, she would talk to me like it was the most normal thing in the world even when I was clearly shutting down, and somehow without me planning it, I found myself telling her everything that was bothering me like I had suddenly found my therapist sitting right in front of me in school corridors and empty classrooms, I don't even know when it shifted, one moment I was avoiding people and the next I was explaining my thoughts, my anger, my confusion, my past, like she wasn't just a friend anymore but someone who could actually hold the weight of my mind without dropping it, and she never judged me, not once, she just listened, sometimes nodding slightly like she already understood things I hadn't even fully said out loud, and I don't know when or how but I finally got better, not magically, not perfectly, but in a way where I could breathe again without feeling like something was choking me from the inside, I started showing up to school without that heavy pressure on my chest every morning, I stopped expecting every day to be a fight, and I started feeling like maybe I wasn't completely broken the way I used to think I was, and Anna was always there in that process, not fixing me, not saving me like some kind of hero, just existing beside me like stability itself had taken human form, and one day I remember we were walking out of school and I said something small, something normal, and she laughed, a real laugh, not one of those polite ones, and I caught myself thinking how strange it was that peace could feel so unfamiliar, because for so long my life had been chaos that I forgot what calm even sounded like, and now looking at her standing there in front of me, I realized she had become the one person I didn't have to perform around, I didn't have to pretend I was strong or cold or untouchable, I could just be Rafael, messy thoughts, tired mind, and all, and maybe that was the first time in a long time I understood what it meant when someone doesn't save you but stays until you learn how to save yourself.
I remember when I started doing better, Anna asked me to talk to Mary again, and I honestly didn't even know why she cared that much about it, because in my head Anna was never supposed to be involved in anything that had to do with Mary, not after everything that had happened between us, not after I had walked away from Mary when things were getting close to something real two years ago, so when she brought it up it caught me off guard like she was stepping into a space I thought she would never enter, she was the last person I could imagine telling me what to do about Mary, she just said that none of us needed more rumors about relationships floating around school, especially not the kind that always turned into something bigger than they actually were, and she said she didn't want people twisting things, or adding noise to a situation that was already complicated enough, and then she told me she would leave Mary to me, but the way she said it wasn't like she was stepping back out of jealousy or anything like that, it felt more like she was choosing peace over confusion, and she said Mary wasn't supposed to fail emotionally because of a breakup that already happened, that it was still possible for things to be handled in a better way, in a calmer way, like we didn't have to destroy each other just because things didn't work out the way we expected, and at first I didn't fully understand what she meant, but the more I sat with it, the more it started making sense, because I had been carrying so much tension around that situation that I never even stopped to think about how it was affecting everyone else, not just me, not just Mary, but the whole atmosphere around us, and somehow Anna saw that clearer than I did, and I don't know if it was maturity or just her way of thinking, but she was right, it really was the best thing to do at the time, even if I didn't admit it immediately, so I ended up going back to Mary, not because I was trying to fix everything perfectly, but because I wanted to clear the air and stop running away from something that was still sitting in the background of my life, and surprisingly it didn't turn into a disaster like I expected, Mary was mad at me at first, like really mad, and I could tell she had been holding onto a lot more than she was saying, but after a few apologies, a few honest words, and some quiet moments where neither of us really knew what else to say, things soften between us, not in a dramatic, romantic way, but in a way where the tension finally break apart, and after that I tried to do better for the rest of the term, not just with her, but with everything around me, the way I spoke, the way I reacted, the way I carried myself, because for the first time I wasn't just trying to survive the situation, I was actually trying to grow through it instead.
We only had one week left to go home for good, and somehow it didn't even feel real, like the whole school had been living on borrowed time and we were just now realizing it, like everything we had gone through inside those walls was about to turn into nothing but memory, and what made it even crazier was the rumor that graduation might not even happen this year because the school itself was being shut down and moved to Turkey, just like that, no warning that felt real enough to prepare us for it, no emotional build-up that made sense of it all, just an ending that came out of nowhere like life decided skipping the final scene and cut straight to credits, and honestly I didn't even know how to feel about it at first, because part of me thought I should be sad, or nostalgic, or something deep like that, but all I really felt was relief, a quiet relief that didn't need explanation, because I had already given too much of myself to that place, too many versions of me had been born and broken inside those classrooms for me to still feel attached to it in a soft way, and I remember sitting there one afternoon, looking around the school compound like I was trying to take mental pictures without actually moving my phone, watching people laugh, argue, walk in groups like nothing was ending, and I realized something strange, nobody really processes endings while they are happening, we just pretend we have time until time actually leaves us, and maybe that was what this week was about, everyone acting normal while everything underneath was already collapsing into goodbye, and I remember thinking about graduation, or what was supposed to be graduation, and wondering if it even mattered anymore, because how do you celebrate an ending when the place itself is disappearing, when the stage is being removed before the performance even finishes, it felt incomplete, like a sentence that stops before the final word, but I couldn't deny that I was relieved at the same time , because I didn't want to stay in that environment anymore, I didn't want another year of emotional weight, another cycle of confusion, pressure, and silent battles that nobody really talks about out loud, and the idea of leaving, of finally going home for good, felt like I was being released from something that had held me too tight for too long, and I told myself it was fine, that I didn't need the perfect graduation ceremony or the emotional closure people usually dream about, as long as I was done with sciences, done with exams, done with the stress that had been eating at me from the inside out, and as long as I walked away with my diploma in my hand, that would be enough for me, more than enough actually, because at this point in my life I had learned that peace sometimes looks like leaving things unfinished in the most traditional sense but completed in the emotional sense, and even though part of me knew I would probably look back one day and feel something I couldn't fully explain, right now all I wanted was to move forward, to step out of that chapter of my life without turning back too many times, and maybe that was the most honest version of me I could give at that moment, not someone chasing perfect endings, but someone finally accepting that survival itself had already been a kind of success.