That year was the bleakest moment in Elara's life.
Her supposedly best friend had betrayed her. Not only did she plagiarize her work, she also framed her for it and because Elara had no powerful backing, despite having evidence that she was the true owner of the project, she was kicked out of university mercilessly.
It all happened so suddenly that even after her expulsion it took her a whole week, during which she stayed in a hotel, to organize herself. After that week, she decided to man up and tell her family everything, only to get back home to more horrible news.
Her father had lost a lot of money due to a failed investment and, while stressing over it, had a serious accident, leaving him in a critical state in the hospital. Now, her mother was haggled with all the financial expenses, which she barely managed with the money she earned from her little bakery.
Since Elara had multiple scholarships and never required financial assistance, she didn't know, and no one told her out of fear of disrupting her precious project, which she had been stressing about because not only would it guarantee her a good job after graduation, but also the prize money was immense.
Looking at the situation of her family, she knew finding and registering for a new university would have to wait so she could help her poor mother.
She decided to take a job as a waiter and although she wasn't earning much, combined with the other side jobs including tutoring, babysitting, dog-walking, and even freelancing works she could do; money was coming, but it was trickling and could only help in supporting the family feeding and some of the bills while her mother still took care of her siblings' education and most of the bills.
As if life decided to specifically target them, complications arose during her father's treatment and the hospital bills skyrocketed, leading them to borrow from the bank just to cover the bills.
Elara watched wide-eyed as everything in her life crashed down, including her family's happiness and even her mother's health, which was gradually getting worse due to stress.
It was a very dreadful moment; during those days, there was not a time when she closed her eyes. She didn't dream of a pair of hands suffocating her and choking her to death. Those hands were her anxieties, fear, terror, and rage.
She was enraged at herself for being so trusting, she was enraged at her weakness, she was enraged at the world's unfairness and corruption, but even more, she was terrified of the coming days as everything in her life just kept on collapsing.
After nearly getting fired from her waiter job for messing up the orders, she knew she had to do something about herself or she'd run mad. That wasn't an option, she couldn't create more problems for her family.
She was suffering from chronic depression, self-hate, stress, and insomnia and was on the verge of being suicidal. She couldn't even tell how she was living, it was like she had hallowed out and was being run by some mysterious vice. But she could tell that if she didn't take control back, she'd run out of whatever was running her, and the consequences would be disastrous.
Having known that she was lost on how to help herself. She had no money or even time for a therapist and after trying those self-help groups online and finding no improvement whatsoever, she concluded that her situation was hopeless.
So she gave up and just kept running like a robot, until that night.
For some reason, she had fallen asleep immediately, lying on her bed, even without the help of her sleeping pills, and had a ridiculous dream. In the dream, she was stuck in a hole, a large, deep hole that kept filling up with water and threatening to swallow her.
She gasped and struggled and tried her best to climb out of the hole, but the walls were as slippery as ever, and she couldn't even hang on to talk more about climbing. The more she struggled, the more filled up the hole became until it reached her chest region then she stopped.
Calmly looking upwards to nothing but bleak darkness she chuckled in her dream and let the water drown her.
She woke up calmly for the very first time in a while and walked towards the bathroom. Staring at her haggard-looking self, she cackled; her laugh was like the sound made by the broken strings of a guitar and was painful to listen to. Rather than a laugh, it sounded more like the screech of an animal in deep pain, like the disturbing cackle of broken glasses when being stepped on.
Somewhere along the line, she had forgotten how to laugh; now, whenever she laughed, her cries merged with her laughter and formed an unappealing sound.
How… when…. since when did she become this weak? Since when did she let things tear into her like this? Or maybe she had always been weak but deluded herself into thinking she was strong because she handled minor issues in the past, and now that something of this matter had appeared, her real strength was revealed.
"Weakling," Elara muttered to herself in the mirror before going back to her room. She grabbed a book and a pen and began writing. How could she forget? She had never needed therapy or asked anyone for help no matter her situation. It was always she, herself, and her.
And, of course, her most trustworthy friend, Sarah. Who was Sarah? Sarah was a character she had invented at a young age who was always there for her, understood her even more than her family, and helped her go through every difficult situation she faced.
She trusted no one but Sarah but she failed Sarah and paid dearly for her actions.
Completely trusting a creature you have no control over was utter foolishness; she knew this from her childhood, so how and when did she falter? Now she was paying heavily for it.
'No one can help me out of this but myself. Me, Myself, I and Sarah.'
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"Thinking about it now, what I needed wasn't to 'man up'. What I needed was someone to depend on, and although faulty, Sarah did her best to help me. She pulled me out of my dump and helped me revive myself. We struggled and preserved until things eventually worked out. Some friend of Dad helped him and my mum's parents, which she was estranged from due to her marriage. She got a whiff of what was happening and solved half of our problems; until then, I never knew my mum came from a well-off family."
"But I didn't resume college after that, I instead took courses online and became a writer. Creating Sarah motivated me; it taught me that during difficult times, what we truly need is company, a person who would understand our struggles and be with us through them. I didn't have that, so I created a fictional character to help me and I know a lot of people out there are like that as well. That's why I strive to create well-written characters because just as Sarah helped me survive that difficult moment, I want a character of mine to help someone who has nobody out of his moment of despair. That's my goal in writing!"
Elara concluded her story with a smile. Truthfully, she wasn't sure if she got anywhere with that, but she hoped she did. She wasn't a saint or anything, but the least she could do as a human with humanity was to help those she could. It wasn't much but she was satisfied with just that.
There was silence between the two and for a while, Elara wondered if she would be chastised for wasting Mr Terrence's time.
"Your message… was well delivered." Mr Terrence finally muttered slightly with a groggy tone. The story just now had touched him so deeply he was nearly moved to tears but had to hide it. This was the bad thing about him that he still couldn't delete, he was just too sensitive.
"Really?!" Elara beamed with gladness, "Well, am very glad! I hope you find someone who will be your shoulder to lay on, sir. And I want you to always remember that dark days may prevail, but they do not stay forever; what can stay forever is the darkness in our hearts preventing us from seeing the bright days ahead of us and sometimes even right in front of us! This is why we must be steadfast in our ways, there is nothing more brilliant in this world than hope and love."
After declaring something that seemed straight out of an anime, Elara became embarrassed and could only laugh to mask her shame.
A few moments later, only Terrence remained alone in the empty room. Elara had excused herself and left, leaving him with her handkerchief as a trademark to always remember her lesson. His gray eyes stared at the creamy green handkerchief, and after gently straightening it out, he placed it into his trousers' pocket.
He hadn't understood what it meant to have people surround you, ones that truly loved you, yet feel alone until he heard Elara's story. Her family, who loved and adored her, was with her, yet the troubles of life swept her into a profound darkness that engulfed her.
Yet, within that bleak place, she stood her ground and single-handedly clawed herself out of her issues. And today, she was still standing strong and working to help others out of their darkness, to teach them that within every darkness there was a light waiting to be discovered.
This lady had a different kind of strength, and that strength was mesmerizing.
Truthfully, he wanted to make excuses; what about him? She had her family, but he had no one, then he realized that this was just an excuse. She was more than right, he had no one but himself to come out of this darkness.
What did she say again? Everyone needed at least that one person to help them, a shoulder to lean on… of course, it was still up to him to help himself, but she was right; he needed help.
Very well then, he would heed her advice and who else was a better help than the adviser herself?
Taking out the phone he had placed in his pocket, he called just the right person for the job.
"Yes. Her name is Elara, she just walked out of here right now. Find out everything about her, especially her free days; if she has none, then I'll make them myself."
A certain sojourner female who was cheerfully thinking about which food she'd gorge on when she arrived at her destination had no idea what was coming for her.