Because I couldn’t talk about it.
I couldn’t think about it without feeling like I was going to break again.
He broke me.
And I’ve been slowly trying to put myself back together.
I finally reached my limit.
That’s the part that hurts — the realization that there was one.
That I had been burying myself deeper and deeper for eight years and I would have kept going as long as he stayed.
I like the medication.
That’s the part I don’t say out loud.
It made my insides match my outsides.
Empty.
Blissfully, completely numb.
The days blended together.
The lightness I’d always felt — the thing I didn’t even know I’d had until it was gone — disappeared.
And now everything just dragged.
Every step. Every thought. Every feeling.
Like I was moving through something thick.
• • •
My parents noticed.
I could feel them watching me the way they’d watched me at eleven, at fifteen — that careful, quiet attention they think I don’t see.
I felt bad about it.
About being just — gone.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do much about it.
• • •
So I kept up the appearance of a person who was fine.
Grades stayed up.
Joined the debate club.
Made new friends — junior year, new classes, new corners of school I’d never been in.
They were fine. Good, even.
I blocked Taylor.
