She.

She seems so invincible. She’s the girl your mom warns you about, you know, the one who comes into your life just to burn it down and leave you laying in the ashes. It’s not like she’s to blame. Look to the senior guy who broke her heart freshman year the night of homecoming with some girl under the bleachers to blame. Still, she goes for the guys that prey on the vulnerable. She hides it well, her vulnerability. When you watch her for as long as I have, you’ll see she’s strong, opinionated, loud, passionate, and impatient. You wouldn’t even know that her heart is locked tightly away in a cage. What’s on the outside isn’t always what’s on the inside.

But just touch her and she’ll wince. What she was born into took a lot from her. Imbedded into her bones was the self-doubt, worthless, fragile little girl her father turned her into. The broken bones and scars her own personal medical record… and mine. He died when she was twelve. You can’t imagine the look on her face when she ran to my house to tell me, a look reserved only for me. Her mom spent the better part of her childhood drinking to distract her from the beating they took. She relied too heavily on him and when he died she stopped the drinking and turned the better part of her self-will to her work and deepening the self-hatred her daughter felt.

She has secrets and trusts no one. His name was Aaron. We met him the first day of sophomore year. She had fallen for him by lunch. It was early October when she snuck in through my window soon after he dropped her off. The gold in her eyes shined as bright as the sun at noon in July, the smile on her face was gleaming, it was the happiest I’d seen her since she was 12, and I knew she was in love. He drew her out of the world of pain and fear. He left 2 weeks later, leaving a note and an old war necklace that was his grandfathers as the only goodbye. The fall was longer than the time they spent together, for she’d wandered into love only to be ditched in it. He still doesn’t know I held her every night for 15 days while she screamed and cried until exhaustion took her from the pain. She never said ‘I love you.’ He never realized that every time she laugh, shook her head and said “You’re such an idiot,” was the ‘I love you.’ She still doesn’t know I realized the cage around her heart was now a fence with watchtowers. She made me promise I’d never leave, as if I even wanted too. Some secrets are better kept.

She’s the perfect example of betrayal. The boys who once told her they loved her then left her, the parents who brought her into the world with the way to high expectation to receive love and happiness, the teachers whose quick glances and unspoken words never went reported. She let them destroy her trust put into others, and the cruelest thing of all was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for letting her trust them. After all, the greatest betrayal she suffered was my own.

Because everyone she’s trust broke her. It’s been four months and 26 days since New Year’s Eve. Four months and 26 days since my heart stopped at 3:42 am. She graduates today. She got into art school. She met Lindsey 4 days into the new semester. She showed her the power she wields as a strong and loud and open-minded women. She didn’t fall in love so easily anymore. She wasn’t heartless, she was just smarter. Her happiness now relied on herself. She tells me to stop watching her, in the end, everything will be okay. For some reason, I chose to believe her.

 

Author's Note

This is something I had to write for my creative writing class based off a random prompt given to us, so it's possible something might sound familiar.

Reviews

[iamshadowine]

this a really good one! kudos! :) keep writing...