When I see the old pictures of you, I get this deep pang in my chest. Yes you’re here with me now, we ended up together, but I would give tremendously to go back in time and run into the arms of that boy. Because, despite what happened later, I know that boy was faithful to me. He would have been so upset with this version of you, as I cried in his arm telling him everything you did. I would have been able to grip him like a lifeline, inhaling the smell that was my peace. These are the things I have not been able to articulate. That such a large part of me, mourns that person of the past. That person that I considered my soul mate. The connection I felt with him was unlike I had ever experienced, or have since. He was everything. I miss him constantly.

I think that’s why I still cling to the We Ride Dirty, falling apart, black T-shirt. It belonged to him. The boy who loved me.

Five years ago, as we sat inside that pastors office one session, I will never forget what he said to us.

“I can help when a woman comes to me and says that her marriage is in trouble. I have yet to be successful when a man comes to me asking to save his marriage, for by then it is already too late. She has already given up on the situation.”

I’ve thought of this statement often throughout these years.

I keep screaming at him to wake up, pay attention, please don’t be too late. Because I never doubted the words of that pastor. I knew that any woman who said, it was too late, had probably spent years trying to get her husband to please just see her.

I’ll never tell him but I’m waiting to see what happens in May. If he sticks to counseling, if it actually brings about change. If not, then I just may turn into that wife in the pastors story.

Bastard told me that he thought of leaving for my own good. So that he would stop hurting me and that way I could really move on and find happiness. Had he been within swinging distance, I would have hit him as hard as I could. The rage inside felt different. It silenced all feelings of sadness. It left everything feeling a little bit dead and hollow. Like an out of control fire, flaring in rage, then almost dying immediately from lack of oxygen.

How dare he.

How. Fuckin. Dare. He.

I asked my counselor last week, at what point am I just being stupid?

As I cried and cried on her sweet love seat I wondered for a moment if she wouldn’t cry to. Not from pity, but because she seemed to recognize my pain. She knew what it was like to feel this.

I didn’t tell her how in the moments after he spoke those words that my forefront thought was, I will hunt you down if after everything you leave me like this.

Guess it’s a good thing I made more appointments.

Once upon a time, years ago I wrote a story. It sat unfinished for years because I couldn’t decide how it should end. In one swift moment I suddenly knew, to make it the most that it could be, she would die and he would lose her. Sometimes I wonder if my fingers had found a different path along that keyboard if my life would have turned out differently.

In that strung together mess of words, the boy betrays the girl merely using her for gain. Then in one final battle he can hear her heart crying out to him as the life drains from her body. Despite it all, he was the last thing that her soul continued to cry and long for. As he desperately searched for her, the panic began to fill him as he felt the life slipping with heartbeat cry.

I found myself thinking about these words I wrote. This story I brought to life. How once he found her the only thing he could do was hold her and apologize over and over.

Please don’t let this be how my life will be. Fighting for the boy who wont see until its to late.

What must it be like to love and be loved freely? I imagine it to being the purest form of freedom. Something respected and treasured. Something a heart would be willing to go into battle for, without hesitation. To be totally alive and thriving within the soul of another. Being completely and utterly yourself without fear and abandonment constantly calling out like dictators in the background noise of your existence.

I can hear my soul, pounding against my ribs, begging for someone to let it out. To let it live. Yet, those born in cages believe being free to be a crime. What must it be like to open up, to live within the light and not trembling with uncertainty.

I want to scream at him. I want to throw my fists and watch him bleed. I want to see him in absolute devastating pain. I just want to be enough.

I thought I was getting past it. I thought I was healing and moving forward in a healthy way. Now I wonder, if thats even a possible reality or have I been tricking myself to survive today? Surely it must be.

Maybe I should start with being truthful. There is not a single day that goes by where I miss the kid. I know its because I never let myself get attached. I did not allow myself to love him. Especially after the day he chose him over me. After that day, it wasn’t even a possibility for me. I do, thank God every day for giving that child to people who will love him unconditionally and endlessly. For I know, it never could have been me.

I’m so sorry kid, this had nothing to do with you. You deserved people who would move heaven and earth for you. My battered and broken soul couldn’t do that. When you were with us, I tried to do everything to the best of my ability and I knew you deserved so much more than that. You deserved buckets up love and I could only offer little cup fulls. It does make me so happy to see you where you are now. I tried.

I wish he understood, that I fight every day to not listen to the voices that tell me to end it all and sometimes he makes it so much worse. He makes me think about open veins. He sends me to this place where its all blinding and the only thing my brain comprehends is that surely there is a way to never feel this way again.

Absolutely fracking dramatic.

They laugh when I make jokes about how I don’t want to die as much anymore. Sometimes I wish one would notice, it was never a joke.

“Don’t let me go.”

It takes a special writer to make someone feel so deeply, but I could not have heard the sentence any clearer if the character had sprung from the page and spoken them out loud into my universe.

I know people wonder about the words painted on my wall. Why that simple sentence? Seems a bit odd.

But I don’t see just the sentence. I hear him speak it. I feel the anguish in his words. I am weighted by the desperation in him.

This may just be a book. This may be an unsettling book. This may be the last thing someone should long for.

But that is just the thing. He is a villain. He is the definition of a bad guy.

But hell if he wouldn’t burn down the world for her.

My body and soul screams for a love like that. I don’t want you to be a hero to the world, I want you to be willing to forsake all for me. I want nothing in the world to matter more than for me to never. let. go. I want that to be the mantra of your everyday step. That no matter what, you would burn down the world to make sure I am the one by your side. That we would walk hand in hand, taking on anything, all the while knowing we would never hesitate to sacrifice everything for the sake of each other.

I want to write about before. I want to write about how my memories feel as though someone has spilled black ink onto the beautiful images and words. I want to write about before everything fell. Before my soul was not ripped from my chest only to be replaced. I want to write about everything before.

But the before is just that. Before.

I am the after. I am what comes from a soul placed in fire. I am what comes from screaming, crying, aching, uncontrollable shaking. I am what comes after that first moment of blinding pain. I am that moment you realized you. have. survived.

I have lived a thousand days in forty-eight hours. I have looked into the darkness and screamed, it could not have him. I have fought on my knees while my body shook uncontrollably. I am the after.

I read something that once that said, “In seven years my cells will have been destroyed and recreated, leaving a body you will have never touched.”

I remember thinking early on, I just have to make it to seven years. Seven years and my skin will be clean of him.

Here I am, just cresting upon the hill of seven years. Part of me wants to say, it was all for nothing. But the freedom and liberation is right there on the tip of my tongue. These new cells do not know the pain from your hands. They do not know what it is like to feel so tainted and damaged. The muscle within my heart may still remember but I breathe a little easier knowing, this body is not tainted by what you did.

Cheers to seven years.

Sometimes I stare at the deep black, the endless canvas of that wall and wonder how relieving it would feel to cut open my arm, smear it against that perfect black surface and let all the words out. To see them smeared and staring back, free from the confines of my skin.

I can see the morbidness in this. But unless you know what it feels like to be trapped and consumed by all the things you cannot bring your mouth to speak, you cannot know the sense of desperation.

My greatest toxic trait has always been thinking I could fuck the sadness out of people.

As I pulled my fingers from my face and studied the tears that dampened my skin I had one pulsing thought. I want to make him bleed one drop of blood for every tear he has ripped into my emotions to produce. I want to reach into his chest and constrict his heart so that he may have one tiny glimpse into what he has done. Anger, my old cherished friend, laces her fingers through mine. We stare back at each other, and I can’t help but mutter an apology to the young girl that I was, who was so sure that life would be better down the road.

Sweet, young, beautiful version of me, I am so sorry. Your soul screamed night after night for relief. I wish I could go back and tell you. I wish I could tell you that we would escape him. He will not rule our life. He will become a horrible distant memory that we set aflame and bury. They will see him for what he is. They will, I promise. They will see everything you’ve been trying to scream about all these years. I would lie to you and tell you that screams would not echo through your future home. I would tell you that she will get away too. You’ll have some of the dream you always hoped for her. I would tell you that you won’t be like her. You will not hide in the closet crying, and crying, until there is nothing left. You will stand, you will wear your scars like armor, you will not fear the pain that rips through your skin. You will walk through fire but you will be so much stronger in the end. I would hold you tight and promise that the weakness you feel now will be obliterated.

What I wouldn’t tell you though. I wouldn’t tell you that ten years later your chest would feel hollow. I wouldn’t tell you that sometimes you wonder why you must continue to exist in this life. I wouldn’t tell you that you fell in deep love, but love and pretty words don’t keep you from pain. I wouldn’t tell you that I’m not actually sure if it ever gets better.