As you can well imagine, for weeks I was dreading going back to school and not finding Maddie. I believed in my heart that that was what was going to happen. I would return on the first day of the new school year, and Maddie would not be there.
I’ve obviously described in previous posts that it was utterly ridiculous that I thought she was gone – but as I believed it at the time, that’s how I had prepared myself. To press on without her in my life, no matter how much it hurt.
And on that first day back, that’s how it appeared to be.
Maddie was nowhere to be found.
She really was gone.
I looked around the sea of faces waiting to go inside for the first assembly of the year, and there was no Maddie.
She was not there.
The mental prison I had locked myself into for weeks and weeks had turned out to be my reality. I had lost Maddie.
I was devastated – even though I had believed she was leaving, and had lived my life in my head as if she were, there was still a wishful hope in the back of my head that I was wrong.
But I wasn’t wrong. The day had come and Maddie was gone, and it took all of my strength not to cry.
That first assembly began, and the new class lists were being read out. I was listening for my name so I knew which class group I had been assigned, but I was otherwise disconnected. My head was filled with thoughts of Maddie and how horrible it felt to know that she was gone.
Right near the end, I heard something that shocked me. It hit me so hard, that it felt like I had been shot. My ears started ringing and I felt the room spinning.
Maddie’s name was read out.
Not in the same class group as me, but her name was read out.
I anxiously started scanning the room for her beautiful face. I was fortunate that I had sat pretty near the back of the hall, so turning and looking everywhere wouldn’t have looked too weird.
But I couldn’t find her anywhere in that room. They read out her name, but she was definitely not there.
Now, was it a mistake? Had they left her on the enrollment by mistake? Was she just absent today?
Suddenly I had a flicker of hope.
But she wasn’t there the next day either, or the third day.
The flicker of hope was there, but it must just have been a mistake, and the pain remained.
On that third day, I drew up as much courage as I could and asked Maddie’s best friend where she was – that she’d been read out in that first assembly, but that she was nowhere to be seen.
“Maddie? Oh, she’s home sick, she should be back tomorrow.”
Then there was that ringing in my ears and totally disconnected feeling again. I must have looked like a complete idiot standing there in a daze.
I don’t know how long it took me to regain my composure, but I was in an amazing headspace – confused, but happy.
Very happy.
She was coming back. Tomorrow.