In Which I Tolerate Eclipse: Chapter 27 -- Needs · 2:12pm Jun 16th, 2018
You have them, but they’re not what you think they are.
Bella drives home and heads to her room, sobbing. I couldn’t care less. She realizes she’s been a horrible person, trying to stay with both Edward and Jacob even though she knew that was impossible. By not choosing, she kept on hurting them. That’s the only reason she’s a horrible person? I would’ve thought it was also her obsession with boys and mistreatment of her father, among other things.
And I realized I’d been wrong all along about the magnets. It had not been Edward and Jacob that I’d been trying to force together, it was the two parts of myself, Edward’s Bella and Jacob’s Bella. But they could not exist together, and I never should have tried.
Well, that’s ridiculously on-the-nose.
Edward stays the night with her. In the morning, he asks if she’s okay. She explains why, even as much as it hurts her to let Jacob go, she’s doing it anyway:
“Edward, I know who I can’t live without.”
“But…”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. You may be brave enough or strong enough to live without me, if that’s what’s best. But I could never be that self-sacrificing. I have to be with you. It’s the only way I can live.”
CM + 1
Apropos of nothing, Bella picks up her copy of Wuthering Heights flips to a certain passage.
“Cathy’s a monster, but there were a few things she got right,” I muttered. I read the lines quietly, mostly to myself. “‘If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.’” I nodded, again to myself. “I know exactly what she means. And I know who I can’t live without.”
I’ve never read Wuthering Heights, but isn’t the point of that relationship that it’s unhealthy, dysfunctional, and twisted? CM + 1
Bella decides that, if she’s going to stay with Edward, she might as well set the marriage in stone; she travels to the Cullens’ and tells Alice that she’s free to do the decorations as long as she doesn’t go overboard. Alice, being Alice, has already gotten a dress for Bella. Bella likes it and is this book still going on? Edward asks Bella why she gave Alice “free reign”, sic; Bella says if she’s going to get married, she’s going to do it properly, with her family involved, to make them happy. Edward promptly backs out of his part of the deal; Bella doesn’t need to get married and he’ll turn her as soon as she wants. It’s time, he says, for Bella to stop trying to make people happy (since when?) and be the one who’s happy. Bella says she wants to do it responsibly, which would be a first. And doing it responsibly means telling Charlie about the marriage and showing him the ring. Fortunately, Edward just happens to have the ring with him.
He once again slid my ring into place on the third finger of my left hand.
Where it would stay — conceivably for the rest of eternity.
CM + 1
Clinginess Meter: 43
One chapter to go and we’re still wasting time. Dear Lord, why won’t this book end?
Because it’s not brave or self-sacrificing enough to let you go.
God, why? D:
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For centuries, literally no one has asked "Is it possible to be in an unhealthy relationship with a work of fiction?" But one woman dared to answer the question.