The SAT tutor my parents hired was embarrassingly good.
I have options.
The whole point is to have options.
I tell myself that’s what I want.
• • •
Because this house is suffocating me.
Every corner of it.
Every room.
I can’t look anywhere without a memory attached to it like a bruise I keep pressing.
The pool. The kitchen floor. The couch. My window.
Nine years of him, built into the walls of a place I used to love.
And I hate that he’s ruined it for me.
My one safe place.
• • •
And I still have the window open.
I know.
I’m aware of how that sounds.
Some part of me — the stupid part — still believes he loves me.
Even now.
Even after the curtain and the blocked number and the year of silence.
I hate that part of me.
I’ve tried reasoning with it. Arguing with it.
Medicating it into quiet.
It doesn’t care.
It just sits there in the back of my chest, keeping the window open, waiting.
I wish I could be someone different.
Someone who can just breathe without all this pain.
• • •
The memories are the worst of it.
Not the bad ones — those I can almost manage.
