◦Lioness on the inside◦

“It’s strange you know, when you planned to marry one person your entire life. You made the plans, your dreams are built around them. You sort of always expected you would be together when the time came. Well, the time is here and instead I am sitting in my bed in a t-shirt that’s two sizes too big and you’re in another city. I wonder if you think about me sometimes too. Probably not. Maybe. Maybe you dreamed of marrying me too. All I know is it’s time to move on. You’re not the one, and it’s time to accept it. I built my life around you, now it is my turn to build my life around myself. It is time to shape myself around what I want. Everyone comes into your life for a reason, now I know what yours was. To show me never to shape myself around someone else.”

“The walls are so tight around me, I can feel water filling the room around me. This weight on my chest won’t go away and all I can do is cry and bang on the walls and hope to god it will be alright in the end. I can feel every droplet of water as it fills my space, every bit as it fills my lungs. It hurts god it hurts. Please make it stop. I just want it to stop.”

“I have learned. I have learned you never loved me. I have learned you barely cared. I have learned you are kind, but that does not mean you were not cruel. But most of all, I have learned who I am without you. Without the questioning if I am good enough. Without the ache in my chest when I learned you were kissing someone else. Loving someone else. I have learned to never allow that much power to be held over me. I have learned just as I can open my heart, I can close it again too. People come into our lives for reasons. I will not be cliche and say you made me stronger, no. I finally see, you didn’t teach me how to be strong. You taught me how to move on from a loss. I made myself stronger.”

“I always had such an idealistic view of love. I believed if you truly loved someone they’d love you back, and one day you’d both ride off into the sunset. I thought everything was perfect. Full of sunshine and rainbows. Then I fell in love with you. And I truly thought we’d make it work, I thought one day you’d see me as I saw you. You never did. I thought it was me at first, maybe I wasn’t pretty or smart enough. Now I know. I loved you, but you only had a schoolboy crush on me. I was just someone who was around, and you were my best friend. I was breaking, but you already broke. I needed someone, you. You needed someone, and it wasn’t me. You were my everything, I was your passing glance. You were a chapter in my book, and I was a paragraph in yours.”

“We’re drinking and laughing and I feel truly light for the first time in ages and I am surrounded by friends. Suddenly my youth comes up. “What was she like when she was young?” They ask him, and I wait for the answer, wondering what he remembers, it has after all been six years since we were friends. Almost something more but not quite. Still too young then. At least, that’s what I thought. “I don’t really remember honestly. I just remember the video game stuff.” And I can feel my heart drop and shatter. I wonder if my best friend could hear it when she looks over at me. I try not to be hurt, its been so long and we were so young, and for the last year of our friendship he had taught me how to play video games, when previously all I had played was neopets and other similar games. It wasn’t as though he remembered the dumb things, he remembered something important for us. For me. Even so it hurts. But it shouldn’t. And I know they know it because I do. So I laugh. It’s such forced sound and I hate it. I grin despite my heart being in pieces. “Damn that’s stone cold.” And somehow I manage to find the humor in it. And I laugh at myself this time. Because I remember it all. I remember our first meeting, and I remember the time he pulled me out of a closet when I ran away crying because those kids wouldn’t leave me alone. I remember buying popeyes candy and pretending to smoke them. I remember your favourite goddamn candy. I remember it all. And I think about it every single fucking day, and he’s barely given me a second fucking thought. He can’t even guess my favourite fucking colour. I know his birthday, and he didn’t even know my age until it gave him a reason to drink. I really truly loved him, and he didn’t give a shit about me. “Still friends.” He told me. What a fucking joke. I’m a fucking joke. I look around at my friends and I realize they’re staring, as though expecting me to fly off the handle, and I am, but I’ll be damned if I let him know. I keep the grin in place and I do what any sensible person does. “That was a really stupid movie, I can’t believe you made me watch it on my birthday!””

i’m always going to love you, but i’ve learned to not need you anymore. i’m not ashamed of still loving you, but i’ll never let you suck the air from my lungs again.

let nothing stop you

“If I could choose not to meet you all those years ago, I would still walk up to you on that playground. I would still set next to you at that computer screen. You taught me lessons I needed to know. My heart is bits and pieces glued together, but it is also full of love and compassion now. The pain taught me. The pain made me. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“So we’re done?” she asked quietly, too afraid of the answer. He looked up at the stars for a moment and looked down.

“I don’t hate you. I wish you all the best. I hate myself, for letting you in, for loving you even when I knew who you were. I hate that I imagined our future. I hate that I dream of you, of us. Most of all I hate that I still love you and I think I always will.”

Burning Freedom

“You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.”