He just keeps trying.
He is the most perfect person I have ever seen. And I have been slowly killing that for years. Not on purpose. Ever since I was a kid. But that has never made it better.
And I wake up every morning and give up.
I come from a dark house. That’s the only way I know how to say it. Dark house, dark hands, dark things that happened in dark rooms that I have never said out loud to anyone.
Not once. Not even to him. Especially not to him.
For so long I held it in. Because he would hold it. I know he would hold it. He would take every dark thing I have and press it against his chest and carry it without flinching and call it love.
And it would destroy him. The way it destroyed her.
My mother loved my father. She held everything he gave her all the dark, all the damage and she carried it until she couldn’t. I watched that. I grew up inside that.
I couldn’t watch it happen to Ro.
Perfect Ro. Who was all love and happiness.
I didn’t want to ruin him.
• • •
And I am made of the same materials as him. I have his hands. His jaw. His same silence when something I wrong. I caught my own reflection once and had to leave the room.
I am not safe to love.
That’s what I know about myself. In my bones. In the place where other people keep their confidence.
I am not safe to love and Rowan Hayes is the safest person I have ever met and I have spent too long reaching for him anyway because I am selfish and he is the only light I have ever had and I cannot make myself stay in the dark. Even though I try.
• • •
That’s the whole truth. I am weak. I know I’m weak. I know that every time I came back through that window I was choosingmyself over him. Choosing the warmth of him over the safety of him. Choosing to be near the light even knowing what I do to light.
I dim things. I have always dimmed things.
Because the dark snuffs out the light.
I dimmed his mother's garden just by existing in it. She grew daisies and laughed and loved and she took me in like I was hers and I brought my dark house into her bright one and eventually she was gone and her garden needed someone else to tend it.
I know it's not healthy or logical for me to think that way.But its what I feel at 3am. When the drinking isn't working and the quiet is too loud and his texts are sitting on my phone and I can't bring myself to answer because I don't deserve him.
I thought maybe distance is the thing. Maybe if we're not right next to each other for a while, I can be better.
And I was better for a while.
Then my father called.
And I was eleven and small and scared and made of all of the wrong things again.
So I went quiet.
Because that's what I do.
What I've always done.
When the dark gets too heavy I close the door.
