The last phrases we had were FUCK YOU to each other, exactly how it sounds is exactly how we said it, and I haven’t spoken to Fatima since. She did some things to me that I never thought she would, since then my heart hasn’t been beating properly. It’s an unbearable pain that has left a wound in my heart that I’m afraid may not heal. Before I get to the story of what happened between us here’s a little background of what I thought was an unbreakable bond. The scariest part is that I lost another person through all of this as well.

Fatima and I are cousins but also good friends, soul sisters. I never thought that I would find a friend like her. It all started in the 7th grade, believe it or not, I didn’t like her at first she just did too much for me but once we spoke, we hit it off and have been friends ever since. We went on double dates, lived with each other once upon a time, wore each other clothes, and even got matching tattoos. She was the yin to my yang and vice versa everyone knew about us. We even decided that we were going to go to the same college, our plans were to get married around the same time and just live out our lives together as family/friends our story isn’t like everyone else’s to your surprise, we didn’t grow up together. We had just met in the 7th grade.

An email is what got us here. A week before my birthday I received an email from a stranger that attended the same high school that we went to that said that Fatima had slept with my father. Here’s what that email said:

Subject title: I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you this.

“ Hi, Marie my name is Eboni. I know this is odd and you are probably wondering how did I get your email address, I’ll explain that to you later at the end. I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you this especially because you have no idea who I am and I know I might be in the wrong for this but it keeps me up all night and slows my day down. It kills me inside to know that this is being kept a secret from you. No one deserves this kind of news.”

My heart at this point is racing. I have no more patients in me and I’m just ready to get to whatever this is about. The email continues.

“ Fatima, me and some friends went out last weekend. We went to a bar and then a party where we met up with more friends, we were all sitting around you know doing the usual. The drinks started to flow but not a lot to where people started acting crazy but just enough. Fatima comes out and says “ I just had the best sex with this guy and I can’t stop thinking about it even tho it’s wrong”. I asked why was it wrong and she counties to say that it was wrong because it was her best friend's dad and that she didn’t know about it. She continues to say explicit things about your father in ways only a wife would about her husband. She knew what his body looked like head to toe, knew what he smelled like and where his birthmark was. The following Monday I went back to an assignment that I had done in the 12th grade that I had kept for all these years it had your email on it like everyone else’s and that’s how I was able to write you this. Anyways, I’m sorry! I wish you the best in whatever decision that you make with her and your father moving forward.

P.S Eboni

I dropped my phone and fell to my knees, what Eboni didn’t know that Fatima did was that my mother just died from cancer only 1 week before. How could she do this to me? How could my father do this to me, to my mother, to our family?. Everything that Eboni said in that email was completely true she gave me more than enough reasons to trust her as a stranger. The things that Fatima said about my father were weird because only a person that has been sexual with him would know where his birthmark is. My mom and dad were playful and she would always make jokes about his birthmark on his butt. I and my siblings would always run away when we heard them. I dropped my phone so hard that I broke it, I just cried I cried for days, days turned into weeks until I dared to say something. I told my father exactly how I felt and left the house, far as Fatima when I brought it up to her of course she denied it and got mad. We had words as I mentioned at the beginning and that was the end of it. At this point I lost everybody that I had, I was at a loss of words I don’t understand, I don’t understand anything anymore. My mom is gone and my best friend and dad betrayed me.

This might be the lowest point of my life and yet I have no idea how to move on or forward from here. It’s like a bad dream I’m patiently waiting to be over but reality comes and I know it’s true and not a dream. The pain will be here forever. Once I realized that this was real and it was happening, I packed my bags and made a promise to myself, a promise that left me not in peace but pieces.

The moral of the story is your family will be the ones to hurt you first and a stranger will be the ones to help you.

P.S. A piece left.