Call Me Ella (ft. Niall Horan)

Chapter 34 - New Life

Chapter 34 - New Life

Life as a free girl who does whatever she wants is great. At the beginning a bit overwhelming because I know I don’t have anyone to answer to but myself. This taste of freedom is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tried and I waited for this for six years and it was worth it. It was so worth it.

I don’t have Rhonda nagging me to do what she wants. I don’t have to worry about fighting her because that’s over. I don’t have two annoying stepsisters ordering me to do what they want. No one has power over me anymore, not that kind of power. All the time I have is only for myself, I decide what I do next. I’m not a slave, I’m not a piece of a sick game.

I’m free.

And every time I think about that I feel like crying because there’s nothing more beautiful than this.

Yet not everything is sweet because it’s too recent. I still think of Rhonda and all what she did, all what she made me do and the things I gave up for her, and the thing which hurts the most is Niall. Yes, it still hurts but I’m moving on, just not as fast as I’d like to.

It’s funny how heartbreak works. One day you think the world is over and that nothing has meaning because all the brightness is gone with him (or her), but you are still there, breathing, moving and you don’t have another option but to carry on. And eventually you find yourself realising that you have moved on, that it doesn’t hurt that badly anymore and that you’re stronger than what you thought, that he or she wasn’t your whole world even though it felt like that at some point. You realise your world is larger than one relationship. And you accept that one day you’ll get your heart broken again but Charlie once told me that some things are worth getting our heart broken. That’s quite clever so I’m not sure it was his idea, but that’s not the point. The point is that heartbreak is part of life and even if it seems impossible at some point, it stops hurting.

In my case it still hurts because I guess I fell harder for Niall than I thought and it’s not easy to move on, especially because I see the face of my ex everywhere. Being in the retreat centre kept me in a bubble. I saw celebrities but just as I saw other people, now I see them as they are for the rest of the world: the cover of magazines and billboards. I see Niall on every teen magazine, I hear him on the radio, I see him on the double-decker! It was horrible the first few times, but I’m getting used to it. Just now I’m really grasping the magnitude of Niall’s fame. And Harry’s. And all of them, to be honest. How they are always on the spot. Sometimes I imagine what would have happened if I had decided to give up and surrender to Rhonda’s game and be with Niall. I’d be on those magazines, with Niall, with people asking where I came from, how I ended up with him and with thousands of fans hating on me just because Niall chose me. My life would’ve been in gossip magazines just like Eleanor's. She wasn’t a celebrity in the centre, just the girlfriend of one, yet she’s in the magazines as well. On the telly they talk about her, too.

I don’t know if I would have been able to cope with that just after I set free from Rhonda’s prison. It would’ve been too much. Seeing all the magazines and how Niall doesn’t really have a private life reassures me I did the right thing. Plus, it wouldn’t have worked out. After disappearing for three months their lives are chaos and I think the consequences of that decision of staying longer at the centre are too big to handle.

I wish them luck.

Niall has a life so public and hectic, he’s a slave of his own fame, very much like I was Rhonda’s slave. But I’m free now and I don’t know if he’ll ever feel like I feel now, but I hope he does. I hope he'll one day feel like his life is his again. I hope he'll feel free again. If not, he can always go back to the centre. At least there he will have some peace.