The alarm bell rang.
A random song was playing from Spotify. That's what she had chosen for her alarm bell. She slowly opened her eyes.
The heaviness was quick.
It came rushing into her chest as soon as her mind had caught up with the fact that she was awake.
It was 8:30 am.
She was suppose to get up, freshen up and start working on her school assignments and all those other grown up things that she needed to do.
But she closed her eyes again, pushed her face into the pillow.
She didn't feel like waking up.
No- Waking up felt scary and she just couldn't find it in her to start another day.
Another day that just made her wish once more to not wake up ever again.
She closed her eyes.
'Why did you have to leave me?'
Tears-
Fresh, warm and gut wrenching, slowly made way down her eyes.
The alarm had stopped.
"I should sleep... I should sleep some more."
She mumbled to herself and she did just that. She stole those moments away and just closed her eyes again. She grabbed her teddy bear and grabbed its soft furry hand to put on her eyes.
She was honestly glad she even bought it. Even when she had no money. She bought it. The first time she saw it at Smith's. It had looked just like Jelly bean, her kitten. He looked almost ugly with mismatched eyes and scruffy fur.
But he had been by her side during her worst moments.
Moments that started the moment she had taken the huge step of leaving her homeland to go and strive for something better.
Growing up, her parents never had the money to buy her a stuffed toy.
And now, at 30, it was a bit pathetic how she had bought it finally to just have something to hug.
Because that's how lonely she felt.
And now, as her lover from six years had suddenly ghosted her, Jelly bean was the only one, hiding her puffy eyes, keeping the light from the window in the roof away from her.
She slowly shuffled under the comforter that felt too warm now that the summer was here and grabbed her phone to put a timer.
'30 minutes.'
'I will wake up after 30 minutes. Yes.'
She told herself that lie.
The lie she told herself everyday for past two months.
Two months since he had disappeared from her world completely.
Every morning, like a cold ritual, she would wake up at 7 am, but close her eyes again.... Then wake up at 8:30...
Then 9:30...
10....
sometimes it would go on until it was 11 am...
sometimes even 12...
She slept and slept until she knew she had to wake up to go to work.
Work- which she had to go to, because that work gave her the bare minimum to survive in this foreign land.
However- the two hour thirty minutes shift meant something different for Maria.
Because ever since he had left, during her shift, she cried and cried and cried.
Even as she was cleaning the bathrooms, moping the floors or just vacuuming. She cried with every breath.
"Please...Please God...Just give him back...Just once...Just once make him come back...."
She wiped her tears with her old beige scarf and clenched her teeth as she put the bucket down to just sit on the chair, sobbing.
It was good that no one really came to supervise while she was cleaning up.
Or else she wouldn't even be able to cry in peace.
"All I did was love him...So why? I never asked for anything big. I never wanted a lot. I just wanted him...I just wanted to be with him....Please God...You can do anything right? So please...Please just give him back to me...I don't care even if he is bad for me. Please...Just please...Your humans are hurting me like this...So don't hurt me like this..."
She choked on her tears, coughing but then sucked her breath in.
Her gaze went to the clock on the wall.
5:00 pm....She only had half hour to vacuum the whole floor...
"Breath, Maria...Breath..."
She told herself.
After all...She wasn't courageous enough to kill herself.
All she could do was pray.
That's all she knew.
Because that man had left her with nothing.
He never gave her a safety net.
And when she wasn't drowning in her love for that man, she realized those truths.
Maybe she had been nothing to him more than someone he used to make himself better. That's why he had left her just so easily. To him, she was nothing more than words he wrote on the apps they used together.
But to her, he was everything.
She loved him with her every breath.
So now, she needed to learn to breath again.
Because despite her prayers and that little bit of hope, she knew, he was never coming back.