Chapter Three
695 Words
Shadows of Herself
Days turned into weeks, but for Alexander, time no longer had meaning.
She stopped going to choir rehearsals. Her phone buzzed with messages from friends:
“Alex, are you okay?”
“We’ve not seen you in church, what’s happening?”
“You promised to help me with that dress, remember?”
Sometimes she read them, sometimes she didn’t. She rarely replied. When she did, her answers were short, empty words that fooled no one. I’m fine. Just tired. Maybe later.
She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t tired. She was fading.
The sewing machine in her room remained untouched. Her sketchbook gathered dust on the table. The joy she once felt in sketching a design, watching fabric transform beneath her fingers that joy was gone. Every time she tried to touch the machine, her chest tightened until she pushed it away.
Her mother tried, every day, to coax her back to life. “Ale, why not draw something small today? Not a dress, maybe just a sleeve, or a neckline. Start with little things.”
But Alexander would shake her head, her voice flat. “I don’t feel like it.”
One evening, her father walked into her room without knocking. He found her sitting by the window, staring at children chasing each other in the street. The laughter outside drifted in, filling the silence she had wrapped herself in.
“You can’t continue like this,” he said firmly.
She didn’t turn to look at him. “Continue like what?”
“Like a ghost. Like someone who has no life left.”
Her lips trembled. “That’s because I don’t.”
He walked closer, his steps heavy. “Don’t speak nonsense. You are breathing. You have hands, you have eyes, you have a gift in those fingers. People will pay for the work you create. You are not dead.”
Finally, she turned to face him, her eyes brimming with tears. “But I am empty, Daddy. What use is my gift if I can’t give my husband children? What use is beauty if it hides brokenness?”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ale, listen to me. This world does not reward pity. It rewards strength. If you sit here and cry forever, you will waste the years God gave you.”
Her voice rose, sharp with pain. “So I should just pretend? Pretend I don’t feel like my whole life has been taken from me? You don’t understand, Daddy. You can’t.”
His expression softened, but his voice stayed steady. “No, I don’t understand. But I know pain. I know disappointment. And I know that if you let this thing define you, you will regret it for the rest of your days.”
When he left the room, she sank back into the chair, tears spilling again. She whispered to herself, “How can I not let it define me, when it’s all I am now?”
That night, as she lay awake, memories crept in uninvited.
She saw herself two years ago, standing in her small high school hall during choir practice. Her voice had soared above the others, strong and sweet, filling the room with hope. She remembered the joy in her teacher’s eyes, the applause from her classmates, the way her heart had swelled with pride.
She saw herself at fifteen, sewing her very first dress from leftover fabric. The stitches had been uneven, the hem too long, but she had danced around the room wearing it, laughing at her own mistakes. Her parents had clapped, her mother snapping pictures, her father smiling broadly, telling her, One day, you will clothe the world.
The memory cut deep. That girl felt like a stranger now.
Alexander pressed her pillow against her face to stifle her sobs. She didn’t want her parents to hear, though she knew her mother always did. She cried until her body ached, until her voice cracked.
When at last the tears slowed, she lay still, whispering into the darkness. “Empty. That’s what I am. Empty.”
The word echoed in her mind until sleep finally claimed her.
- Writer
