#spoml

I'm not sad. I'm exhausted, and there's a big difference. My heart doesn't ache, and my breath doesn't collapse my chest. My brain is foggy, my words stick together like tar when the sun is high. My bones are heavy with the words I can't say. I feel like a shell. Empty but still somehow very heavy.

I would say you fixed me, but you didn’t. You helped me fix myself, you kept with me in the slow process that is healing. You helped me understand the parts of myself that I never wanted to know. You helped guide me toward the happiness I never thought that I could feel, and understand that I was never stuck anywhere forever.

This can't be all that it is, right? Questions upon questions about what I'm going to do next when I can't even tell them what I'm doing now. What am I doing now? But then again, do they really want an answer or do they want an admission of struggle?

I saw you looking at nothing, your eyes were distant and filled with a type of magic. In that moment I needed to be close to you. My hands needed to touch your hair and your back and be everywhere they could. My soul was reaching out for you. It needed to touch you even for a second. It's in those moments that I understand why when I'm not with you there's an aching that I can't always place.

I remember the look on your face. I remember the night it happened but not the day. I remember waking up crying, and cornering my mom in the bathroom to tell her and ask her why. She held me tight with tears in her eyes and just whispered, "You're too young for this. You're too young." I remember looking her in the eyes and asking her what age is old enough.  I remember her yelling at my father because she was scared and sad and when she pointed at me I felt like it was my fault. I remember having to face you the morning after and not being able to breathe. I was 12.