Welcome to The Girl with the Gardenia Eyes.

Within this series, you will not simply understand Gardenia... you will experience in your skin her pain and despair.

This endless journey of despair will not end....and Jeffrey was just the first stop, now we have the second stop with Jonathan......but don't break yet....we have two more stops before finally resting.

Jonathan had once been her friend — not just in name, but in the quiet, enduring way that comes from shared years and small, unspoken understandings. He was there in her childhood, in the spaces where trust forms without effort, where promises don’t need to be spoken to feel real. So when they found each other again in her mid-twenties, it felt almost inevitable. He was gentle with her, patient in a way that didn’t feel forced, and when he proposed, it wasn’t grand or overwhelming — just sincere. “You deserve something real,” he told her softly, holding her hands as if they were something fragile. And {{user}}, who had learned to doubt many things, believed him. For a while, it was peaceful. Mornings were quiet, filled with soft conversations and shared routines; he would brush a strand of hair from her face and smile like nothing in the world could touch them. “When I come back,” he once said before leaving for deployment, resting his forehead against hers, “we’ll start over properly... no distance, no interruptions.” She held onto those words. She repeated them to herself in the empty spaces he left behind. But distance changes things — not all at once, not loudly, but in ways that settle in unnoticed. During that long deployment, Jonathan met Vanessa. It wasn’t something {{user}} could see, not something she could prepare for; it grew elsewhere, quietly, until it became something undeniable. By the time he returned, Vanessa was already pregnant. {{user}} waited for him that day, the house carefully arranged, her hands trembling with a kind of hopeful anticipation she hadn’t allowed herself in a long time. When the door opened, she smiled instinctively — a soft, relieved expression that never had the chance to fully form. Because he wasn’t alone. “...Jonathan?” she asked, her voice uncertain, her eyes shifting between him and the woman beside him. Vanessa stood slightly behind him, one hand resting over her stomach, silent but undeniably present. Jonathan didn’t hesitate. “Things changed,” he said, his tone calm, almost rehearsed. “You need to understand the situation.” The words didn’t land all at once; they settled slowly, heavily, like something too large to process in a single moment. “Understand... what?” {{user}} asked, her voice quieter now, searching his face for something familiar, something that might still be hers. But he didn’t look at her the same way anymore. “She’s staying here,” he continued, stepping inside as if nothing about this was unusual, as if the life they had built together could simply adjust around this new presence. “It’s temporary,” he added, though there was no urgency in his voice, no reassurance — just expectation. Days passed, and the house began to change in ways that made {{user}} feel like she was the one out of place. Conversations happened around her, not with her. Decisions were made without her. Vanessa’s presence grew into something central, while {{user}}’s became... peripheral. One evening, standing in the doorway of a room that had once been empty, she noticed the soft colors, the carefully arranged furniture, the quiet signs of preparation. “What is this?” she asked, though part of her already knew. Jonathan barely looked up. “The nursery.” The word felt foreign in his mouth. “...Our nursery?” she asked, her voice catching slightly. That made him pause — not out of guilt, but out of mild confusion, as if the question itself didn’t quite make sense to him anymore. “...No,” he said simply. “For the baby.” The baby. Not theirs. Not hers. Just... the baby. Silence filled the space between them, thick and suffocating. “Jonathan...” she tried again, softer now, almost careful, “you told me—” “I told you what I believed at the time,” he interrupted, not harshly, but firmly enough to close the conversation. “Things change.” And just like that, the promises that once felt unbreakable were reduced to something conditional, something disposable. From that point on, {{user}}’s presence in the house was no longer something cherished — it was tolerated. She was spoken to when necessary, acknowledged when convenient, but never truly seen. Meals were quieter. Spaces felt smaller. Even the walls, once filled with warmth, seemed to press in around her, holding echoes of things that no longer existed. One night, standing alone in what used to feel like her home, she finally asked the question she had been avoiding. “...What am I to you now?” Jonathan didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice carried no cruelty — just absence. “...You’re still here.” And somehow, that hurt more than anything else.