2amloveletter

27. The number that changed everything.

Like Nirvana, the high you felt afterwards will never be matched.
It made you shake the cobwebs from your bones and bare your teeth to the world.
Or at least that’s what you told people.

In reality, you realised that the person you can count on,
can’t be trusted near an unguarded medicine press.
A little child reaching for a hand to hold,
who only found the cool metal of your secret blades
that kissed the top of your thighs, where no one would see.

When the world forced its hands on you,
and your legs open,
the feeling was nothing new.
Foolish girl, don’t you know goof things only happen to good people?
So you buried it, along with your bloody underwear,
and hoped the world would show you some kindness.

And when you met Him, and the hand you’d always wanted offered a home
to rest your head and hide your secrets,
you gave yourself completely to the fairytale.
When He left, you had forgotten what the metallic taste of loneliness felt like on your tongue.
Learn to breathe and not-sleep on your own again
and weather this storm like you have the others
and hope the next shower of sunshine lasts longer than this one did.

There’s a special kind of silence in the aftermath.
When the world stops spinning for just a moment – clocks freeze, tears have yet to form, the air in the room solidifies so tightly in your chest that it feels like you’re drowning – and then it continues.
The next second is had, plans are formed and life continues on whether you want it to or not.

The beauty of experiencing that aftermath time and time again,
year after year,
man after man,
is that you get used to it.
You get used to that sinking feeling that even though you laughed in all the right places and played the innocent whore to perfection, you showed just enough of yourself that you became not-quite-enough.

The girl before the girlfriend.

The “Yeah, I used to sort of see her but it wasn’t really anything” enigma that’s fun to talk about under the sheets of their next lover’s bed, but just not special enough to stay.

But with you, it’s different.
The aftermath, I expected; it’s a life sentence that I’ve been shackled to since puberty.
But the part where you gently brushed my hair behind my ear and my fears into the past, blew my heart wide open.
The part where you sang me to sleep and told me that I was worthy of love, of adoration, of showing my scars and open wounds and not being thrown aside.
You lied so well that you undid a lifetime of disbelief in myself and made me think that maybe,
maybe once,
the worst possible outcome wouldn’t happen and that I would get a happy ending.

When you left, the aftermath hit and I gritted my teeth, waiting for the world to continue spinning, my fingernails digging into the last of my sanity and self-worth
so that once the earth was thrown back into it’s gravitation pull,
I could gather up what fragile pieces of my existence were left and become the
romantic nomad I’ve been forced to become.
Only, this time, it didn’t stop.
It gained force, and speed, and before I knew it, I was 2 months into losing you
and hadn’t even processed that you had left.
I still hear your voice singing as I’m falling asleep.
I still feel the weight of your head against my chest in the bed we shared-
Our bed.
Our home.
Our life.

I discovered the difference between aftermath and fallout.

Losing you, losing everything we had, that you made me believe was mine forever,
is not something that will dull when a clock hand moves forward.
It’s something that has stopped my time,
has left a brick tied to my insides, dragging me the bottom of the ocean floor.
I can’t move on, because there is nothing to move on to.
The fallout of loving you is the end of days.
And like every doomsday preacher, I knew this was coming and yet I still wait,
and pray,
for a salvation that will never come.