Fate is a funny thing.
They tell you that you make your own fate, that it's in your own hands.
What they don't tell you is that this is all bullshit. The very example of which was Haya.

Not more than a day ago, she wanted to kill herself.
Heck, she wanted her best friend to kill her.
But stupid, stupid fate had other plans because right now she was on her way home after a 'successful' surgery.

In her opinion, it's only a successful surgery if you leave happy, if you leave with something healed and yes, in a way everyone could say she was healed but she knew she wasn't. It was only her face that was healed, she still had no cure for her soul.

As she sat in the car with her parents, the sun shone bright, just like it did everyday, but was it a testament to her injury today?
She didn't know.

Right now all she knew for sure was that she wanted to go home and have another breakdown in front of the mirror.
That was who she was, a planner. She loved having perfect control over everything, even on the times when she would cry so when her life had been derailed, her previous breakdown was the representation of just a fraction of what she had been feeling.

Her first breakdown had been enough to throw everyone off the 'act like everything is normal' track. Now everyone was treating her like a piece of expensive crockery, and she hated that.

As she got out of the car and glanced at the house before her, she wanted to tell her mom that this wasn't her house. It wasn't brown and white on the outside, it was off-white and a faded maroon color. It also didn't have the huge tree that her house did, it only had a few bushes here and there.

However, her words died in her throat. Of course this wasn't her house, it was her parents' house. She hadn't taken a whole week to choose the colors of the roof, neither had she spent a whole day at the nursery, carefully picking out the plants for this house.

She had lost that house, that life, that control.

She lowered her head and walked into the house that smelled of cookies and childhood instead of flowers and adulthood, not that she had any objection against that.

She had to come to terms with the fact that this was her house again, that she could never go back to the house she so lovingly decorated with him.

It wasn't him she missed, it was the memories of him, of when he used to be a good husband and as materialistic as it may sound, the things. Their things. Her things.

Her parents were talking to her and she was nodding but her mind was itching, to cry, to be alone.

Finally after five minutes, she excused herself to go rest.

When she opened the door to her room, she once again had the urge to tell her parents this wasn't her room.
There was no king sized bed with sophisticated white sheets and a subtle color on the walls, instead this room consisted of a small bed for one person and brightly colored walls.
Once again, she didn't say those words, for this was her room now.

She had lost that room too, and that relationship.
She was once more a single woman.

She walked to her dresser, staring at her reflection.
She had asked the doctors to put on minimal bandages. There really was no such thing but they did the best they could, even though it still covered almost half of her face.

This was it. She could cry. Nobody would know. She could even kill her self and nobody would be there to hug her and tell her not to do so.

All these thoughts swam in her mind, yet she didn't move an inch.

Maybe she was scared of death, but she wasn't scared of crying.
So why couldn't she cry?
Or move?
She kept asking herself why she was transfixed, but there was no answer.

Maybe this was her reaction now. This didn't mean she wasn't angry, sad, hurt, broken..burnt.

This just meant she was tired of feeling all those things and that she had ran out of ways to express herself.
Her brain still itched and her heart still hurt, but she couldn't cry it out anymore, it was as if there were no tears left in her.

The sadness was slowly morphing into dangerous anger, which she realized but didn't have any control over.
According to her it was better than crying.

Anger was a different kind of high, it would push her to do things.
It wasn't like sadness which would pull her down and make her weak. She was wrong, she knew that too, but right now she had to do everything in her control to make herself feel like she wasn't a piece of shit.

There was a knock on the door, a few seconds after which her parents let themselves in. Her mother had made her chocolate cake while her father pointed out that he had made the frosting, to which she just smiled.

Upon seeing their faces, some part of her brain 'dinged', like a bell. She became aware of the fact that they were the reason that fate wouldn't go her way.

That she wouldn't die.
That she would remain transfixed.

No matter how well they thought they hid it, their pain was very visible and they needed their daughter in their lives, whole and happy, to get through this pain. If she was the cause of their pain, she was also the cure.

She lovingly took the slice of cake and took a bite, making sure to over-compliment the cake, especially the frosting.

"Dad, where's Zara?" She finally asked the question, the one she couldn't hold in any longer.

"She was very sorry she couldn't make it today, honey. Something very important came up."
Her mother answered instead of her father.

"Something more important than her sister returning from the hospital?" She inquired.

The whole time she had been in the hospital, her sister hadn't checked on her once. She had only called and asked their mom.
This wasn't typical Zara, they may argue at times but in her heart she really loved her sister and her sister loved her.

"She'll come to see you soon, darling."
This time her father answered and she just nodded, not in the mood to argue.
Although she had a ticking suspicion as to why her sister wouldn't come to see her.

She shook it off, however, no human could be that heartless.

She sat down in her bed, which proved to be painful just like the car ride home so she lay down on her stomach, because her thighs still hurt from the surgery.

Her face wasn't the only thing they had operated on.

As she lay down, she tried to take her mind off the pain and started to make conversation with her parents. Asking about her uncles, aunts and all her cousins. She had a big family, so the conversation was non stop and fun.

It was something that had slipped her mind, but this was the first time she had laughed in weeks, months even. The returning of the laughter was effortless and unnoticeable to her, but it was a sign. A positive one.

Soon her eyes became heavy and she remembered that in the bunch of pills she had taken before leaving the hospital, there was also a pill to help her sleep, something she hadn't been able to do properly in very long.

Her parents noticed that too, so they kissed her head and left, making sure to leave the bedroom door open. It was weird, but a closed bedroom door had always made her feel trapped, ever since her childhood. Which is why the hospital room and the bandages themselves were a greater torture than anything.

Just as she was about to drift off to sleep, her phone made a sound and it was a text from Zayan
"You and I are going out tomorrow. Haya and Zayan style. No arguments. I'll pick you up at 5-ish"

He knew she didn't want to go out and she knew that he wouldn't take no for an answer. So she told him she would be ready at 5.

She drifted off to sleep later with only one thought swimming in the ocean that was her mind: to accept her life as it was now.