Why

I sit in the same space we once did, under the sheets where I held your head as you cried and kissed every freckle I always adored on your face. I sit here with a ghost of you that holds me back and calls me yours so I can sleep. I’m still getting used to sleeping alone

It doesn’t make sense to me, and that’s not as abnormal as you wanted me to believe, cause no one around me understands it either. How I was somehow the other woman, how you changed so drastically. It just doesn’t add up. The mirror we took pictures in together stares at me in pity, because it remembers. Your indentation in my bed reflects the one in my brain.

My poor mind is branded in the shape of your naked body. Every inch that I adored when it met mine stings. Seeing you with her is salt in the wound, knowing that I was the other woman all along. I was the ploy, the revenge hire, the rebound, while you were it for me.

I’m almost proud of how well you did it. You fooled me perfectly, and I don’t consider myself gullible. You blamed the pills for saying you loved me sober, you said some of the worst words I’ve ever heard in my life. They ring, they radiate in the mirror, they replay in my brain as I drift off to sleep.

“You deserved it”

It, being the rape. It, being the reason I waited to have sex with you. Something you deny to this very day, as if I was a damaged good that corroded the body that I praised so highly on you, which segues into our next.

“You were an embarrassment to be seen with.”

I sat here, in my bed that’s become a graveyard for what we once were, telling you of my accolades and books, attempting to disprove your perception of me. I sat here like a loyal dog in front of its owner, trying to beg you to undo the damage you just did, as if that’s even possible. You stripped me of my clothes and my self respect when you told me the very things that I thought in my mind.

You knew me well enough to know my internal monologue to a tea. You knew how I perceived myself and you, which gave you power. I adored you and I doubt myself, so when you said it, I couldn’t help but believe you.

“No one can be around you sober, you’re too much. That explains your mom, you can’t even blame her for all she did.”

I don’t want to know which part this referred to. The sexual abuse, the abandonment, the physical abuse. I can’t think about it too long. You were all of my worst fears coming to life that night, you were my nightmares and the aspects that haunt me in the middle of the night being said to my face, and all I could muster up the courage to do in that moment was to ask you to not leave me before I gained the strength to leave you first.

And that, you did.

And for that, I thank you.

If you’re reading this, which I would expect you do, I still hope you’re okay, despite it all.

You remind me of the woman who gave birth to me, and maybe you understand her. Maybe she’d understand you.

Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my days praying that the two of you put the bottle down and stop taking pills. Maybe there will be you-shaped holes in me forever.