I might be twenty-four years old, but all I could see in my own reflection was a scared little girl.
Sometimes, I wish I could sit down with that seventeen-year-old girl, hold her hand tightly, and tell her everything would, one day, hurtless. Tell her she needs to be strong. Tell her shewillget knocked down, but for every time it happens, she’ll come up swinging.
Just like tonight.
When I look back on all the past chapters of my life, I see all the pain I have endured. I see the mistakes and heartbreak, the horror and loss. But when I stand in front of the mirror now, I see all my scars and the strength I’ve found from them. I see the lessons I have learned about life and the wisdom I’ve gained from each of my experiences.I will be fine.
I used to wonder, second-guess myself constantly, about the decisions I made in my life; if they were the right ones for me. In my teens, I had all the answers—don’t we all when we’re that young, and have the world open like an unwritten book in front of us? Then life shit on me, changed me forever in ways that I can’t even put in to words. I wish I could just whisper to that little girl of my past, just once. Give her a little pep talk before the big bad wolf came in and just screwed it all up.
Wouldn’t that be helpful? You get what I’m saying, right? Being able to have a little heart-to-heart with the person you were before the world crashed down on you.
And, it will.
Mark my words, one day you’ll feel like your world is crashing, spinning out of control, whatever the Hell that is to you, whatever storm that comes, whatever tragedy floods your life. And, believe me, you’ll have them; we all get touched by some tragedy in our lives. You better hope you’ve got the strength to swim, before it pulls you under and you drown, or become nothing more than the storm, forever moving across the waters, stirring up trouble wherever you touch down.
Somewhere in my small kitchen, I can hear the sounds of Violet looking for some sort of alcohol in my cabinets. All I have are the ingredients for a Mad Hatter shot, and a bottle of wine that Bren brought over one night when he was trying to be arealboyfriend.
Bren.
Maybe you think I’m weak, or a bitch. But, I’ve just proven to you that I’m far from being weak or a bitch. I guess that I haven’t told you enough about me; please don’t form those opinions about me, yet.
Not yet.
Not until you’ve heard it all. And I’m sorry, but Ihavebeen going slowly. Taking my time with my sweet memories, and trying to bury the bad ones. However, you can’t be selective and only bury the ones you choose to bury; I know firsthand.
They don’t stay buried.
Only the things youdon’twant to be buried stay buried.
But to say what it took to gethere, Hell, to put it down in words,damn it, it deadens everything. It makes it seemunreal, easily swept under the rug, and it’s not.
It’s not.
I’m so worried about missing something, of not doing justice to the emotions, to the people, to the heartache, and to the happiness. Because I don’t want my words to just bewords. Every one of them has a history behind it, an emotion so strong that they changed me, touched me, killed me, raised me, made me.
Everybody has a dark side. Some are riddled with guilt about it and hide from it. Me? I needed to embrace mine, because I won’t let anything ever tear me down again.
Violet and I vegged out on my couch for the rest of that night, drinking the wine she found. Then, I mixed up some Mad Hatter shots for her.
I held my phone in my hands the entire time. But Bren, of course, didn’t call. Matt, on the other hand, called Violet at least twenty times. The last time it rang, she walked into the bathroom and took the call; I wanted to throttle her.
Looking down at my own phone, I swiped through my contacts and typed a text.
C: Hey. Had to use my mad Karate skills tonight!
J: WHAT?!
C: Yep. Gathered up my Chi and kicked some A$$
J: Glad now we took lessons?
C: Wax on!
J: Wax off!
C: Think I’m getting pretty buzzed.
J: You alone?
