Ellie wasn’t surprised when she found out Dina wasn’t at home when she arrived in Jackson. She kind of hoped that: she wasn’t ready to see her again. She longed for it, but she was so scared to meet her eyes to find only anger and disappointment.
She wouldn’t have been able to speak out loud how she felt, her apologizes. Not now and maybe not anytime soon. She hadn’t decided yet if she would have stayed in town or left within the sunset. She didn’t know what she was doing since she left the farm, her feet brought her there.
She needed rest.
She needed HER.
She just didn’t know if Dina would have ever wanted to talk to her again. She hurt her too much to hope to be forgiven as soon as she showed up. In the past months she wrote a lot in her diary, those pages were the only conversations she had. She wrote and she drew. She “talked” with Joel, with Abby, with Jesse, with JJ and with Dina. She apologized to them, every page began with “I’m sorry”. She really meant it.
She took her diary from the backpack and opened it. She had portraited all of them: right next to her stream of consciousness there were sketches of the people she used to know, the ones she lost in the last year. She tried to talk to them through her pen. A tear wetted her cheek when she realized she wouldn’t have seen the most part of those faces again.
Perhaps all of them.
She felt a void inside her, the lack of matter she had already experienced more than one time during her lifetime. But never as deep and lasting. The kind of nothing you feel when there’s only emptiness and darkness. The feeling when you step in an abandoned house, burnt and silent.
She looked at the memory of her on that page. Dina was smiling, dressed up as a “cowboy girl” like she used to call her back before the pain and the loss. Another sketch was her sleeping with JJ, the quietness in her face, she felt safe. Ellie was crying, she felt like she never stopped since Santa Barbara. She thought she ran out tears at some point, but every time she felt the weight of all she had lost she started all over. The last draw was Dina’s hands working on embroidery. The picture was a bird they saw during a warm spring afternoon. She remembers JJ was amazed by this tiny colorful bird that appeared on the kitchen window.
She missed that little potato, too.
She barely could breathe to the thought of her, of him, of the life they had before she fucked everything up.
Her, her, her.
She loved her so deeply. She memorized every inch of her, but now picturing her was the most difficult thing ever.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
She found the courage to move her eyes to the next page where she started to put into words everything she wanted to tell her:
“Dina
I am sorry.
I wish I had hated less and loved more.
My heart is filled with regrets, the bad choices I made will haunt me forever. That's what I deserve.
Loss, grief, pain: I hid myself behind these feelings and I allowed them to become a weapon, letting them propagate. As if I was the only one suffering in this ruthless world.
I have been selfish, I blamed and I despised in order to find relief. Revenge is selfish and destructive, you tried to warn me but I didn't listen. It's barren, toxic; as a fire destroying everything for miles and years. Including the ones who set the fire.
I wish I had let your words reach me that night, I wish I didn't waste time building walls while you were creating a family. I let myself intoxicate with the lust for blood and violence, believing that causing more suffering was the only way to defeat my grief. I didn’t give up on that thought, that desire, because letting it go means that I didn’t care, that I had forgotten.
I mistook forgetting with forgiveness. I convinced myself you were forgetting, but now I understand you were forgiving. I recognized it when it was too late. I cursed myself for that. I’m not like you, I am not able to forgive. When I had the chance to try forgiveness, to forgive him, time was stolen from us. But I really want to find a little bit of peace. I need it. The hate I felt for Abby was so loud it consumed my days and my nights. It made me forget what was left. What wasn’t dead with Joel. The things that kept living and existing despite all the pain. I didn’t focus on that, on you, on JJ. I have no excuses. I fucked it up and I have to live with that.
I want you to know that I am really trying to heal by myself and to face the consequences of my actions. Facing the path of destruction and death I left behind with my passage. I wish I would have left something different. I wish all the effort I put on looking for Abby and trying to kill her had been used to keep you safe.
To build a home for us. A future.
I wish the hate I felt had been tamed by the love for you. If I had hated less, right now I would be with you.
You loved more.
I’ll try to learn from that.
I’ll try harder.
I’ll try better.
Until love will take over.
I love you so much.
Ellie”