How To Kill the Feeling - A Forbidden Love Affair (2)

A couple of days ago, I made a request with the same title as this, and many of our friends here gave their very enlightening answer or comments. Thank you so much. As I've said, I was prompted to ask the request to help a friend who is still grappling her way back to reality, and this is her story.

Eliza, Jason, and I were officemates since 1991. We were among the first employees of a big realty company which branched out to our area. Eliza and Jason belonged to the same department and being both site engineers, they were together most of the time doing field work. Eliza's constant togetherness with Jason, a legally married guy with two kids, became the foundation of this forbidden love affair.

No one in the office had ever expected that Eliza would get into such a relationship. She's a smart, very decent, well-mannered woman who came from a reputable family. Eliza once told me that she herself never imagined that she'd fall in love deeply with this married guy, so deep that her world revolved almost just around him. It went on smoothly for more than a year, until she came to me one time, supposedly for cost accounting on some important materials, but when she sensed that I was alone, she slumped on a chair and started to cry. "Jason is divorcing his wife", she sobbed. "He filed it three days ago." I didn't know how to react because I thought what Jason did would have made her happy. I only got the message when she blurted out: "I'm a home-wrecker, a paramour, an adulterer! I'm so guilty!" Eliza's decent character was still running in her blood, it had never been lost after all.

Eliza suddenly disappeared. Jason couldn't answer questions as to her whereabouts. After a week, the office received her mailed resignation letter. Four days later, she called me up, informing me that she's going away for a while, to a place where she could "kill the feeling."

Julia, Eliza's elder sister came to my house about two months after the call. While reaching for a card inside her bag, she said: "The anti-depressants didn't work. We had no other alternative. Please visit her if you have the time, I'm sure it would help."

Eliza was staring blankly on the white wall, her hands clenching a pink rose on her chest when I visited her in the neuropsychiatric institute. "She is suppressing too many feelings inside her and she can't take them out of her system. I could feel the weight; I know they are too heavy for her. She'll stay here until she'd be able to learn how to let go. Please try to talk to her, she's responsive sometimes", said her doctor and left.

Tears rolled down from my eyes. Poor Eliza, she wanted to kill the feeling so abruptly. Maybe she was afraid that if she would not have done it sooner, chances were she'd never be able to do it anymore, and she'll be carrying a more hurting guilt, and a forbidden love which no one in this world could then ever kill.

Eliza is getting better everyday. She could now talk a little about Jason. She smiled when I gave her the draft of this story.