Things started to get hard. Lydia started to change. Her light was…dim. She was around…but she wasn’t there anymore. I couldn’t let her go, but I knewshe had started to hate me. She’d swear she loved me, and I needed to know she did…but it felt different. I still held on anyway. I refused to let her go. So…I went back to finding that temporary high where I could. Especially when it was still throwing itself at me. It made it easier. I needed to know I wasn’t worthless. I needed the words whispered to me by whoever would make me believe them.
Katie was just there, pretty words, a pretty face, a nice body, all the right components to fill my head back up with the endorphins I was desperate for. Most of the time, I would take the words she said to me, the touch she gave me, and pretend they were from Lydia. I needed to feel it all again, the high, the lust, the longing, the prize after the chase. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even want. It was validation. It was a cheap fix to tell me I wasn’t completely worthless…but it was enough to ruin everything. The second Lydia found out, I felt the floor rip open under me. She was gone, and without her, there was nothing. I was nothing.
When I found out my mom cheated on my dad, it confirmed everything I already believed—that nobody stays. Nobody loves without leaving. Nobody ever chooses me. She didn’t choose me. She didn’t choose our family.
I thought Lydia would be the same way… So I also had the mindset that if I did it first, it wouldn’t hurt as much. We would be even, and then we would move past it and stay together.
When she left me, the anger started to eat me alive. Anger at Lydia for leaving, at Katie for existing, at my parents for never giving a fuck, at myself for being too weak, too soft, too broken. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. About us. About the way I destroyed the only good thing I had. I wanted her to fix me, but she wouldn’t. I wanted her to stay, but she didn’t. And all I was left with was this gnawing, screaming voice that said if I couldn’t have her, no one could. The pain of not havingLydia anymore felt worse than not having my parents’ love. I started to hate Lydia at the thought of her wanting to take that away from me.
I thought about dying every day, ever since I was younger. It was like a constant weight in my pocket. Always there. Always heavy. But dying didn’t feel like enough. She needed to know what she did to me. The world needed to know. I wasn’t going to just disappear quietly.
I wanted to go to her, make her listen, make her understand how much she hurt me, how much she broke me, how much I loved her. I thought that maybe I could scare her into staying, or punish her for leaving… or both. It didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that she’d never move on. That she’d never forget me.
I stood on her porch and knocked. I knew before tonight that she’d never take me back like she did every other time. I knew tonight had to be the night I did something. Show her who I was, the real me…show everyone.
She opened the door, and her face was the same but different—tired, wary, already braced for me. When I begged her for five minutes, she gave me the five minutes. She shouldn’t have done that. It was enough to get my hands on her, enough to start what I already knew I’d finish.
Dragging her to the car felt like our destiny. Like the last act of a play I’d been rehearsing my whole life. The gun on my lap, the bottle in my hand, her voice breaking, begging. All of it twisted together in my head like proof that this was love. Sick, violent, desperate love. But still, love.
When I placed that gun against my jaw and pulled the trigger, I wasn’t just ending my life. I was ending hers, too. She’ll carry this forever. She’ll carry me forever. She’ll never escape me. I’ll be the ghost that haunts her. I’ll ruin every touch, every kiss, every attempt at another man lovingher after me.
That was the last shred of control I had over anything.
My hands were steady, my heart was wrecked, and the last thought I had before I pulled the trigger was simple—
I loved you, Lydia.
And I hated you for it.
I was so out of it that I wasn’t even scared…I actually looked forward to whatever was next as long as it was quieter than this.
The world cracked open, and everything went dark.
83
Isabel
The day I lost my virginity was the day I lost myself. The day it was taken from me changed me in ways I never recovered from, never came back from, never survived.
The pain after being raped is almost worse than the event itself. At least the rape stopped. The thoughts never stop. They play on a loop to torture me. Every time I think about it, I feel it. Every time I feel it, I want to die.
I woke up this morning from another nightmare. They happen a lot…and even more when he’s been around.
He came over this weekend. He always comes over like he’s invited, like he belongs. Like he belongs in the room with my brother. Like he belongs in my body.
My palms grab at my sheets and slip from the sweat they’re covered in. I always have the same nightmare. Different angles, same weight. He’s smiling, and my body is small. The world slows down and then gets too loud. I can’t breathe. I don’t know how long I’ve been crying by the end of it. I wake up with my throat sore and a taste of copper filling my mouth…just like that night. I hear him telling me to be quiet, putting his hand over my mouth until I couldn’t breathe. I feel like I’m going to pass out, from the lack of oxygen and from the pain…from the reliving the worst day of my life.
I used to wish I could tell Bash. That he would scoop me up, and everything would be fixed again. That he would find his friend and break him as badly as he broke me. That he would be the one who made it all make sense again. And then I remember how his fists have looked after fights. How close he’s come to getting in trouble for newer, smaller, stupid things boys say at school. How the blood in his voice could drag him into a jail cell for love, for rage…for me.
I can’t let that be my gift to him. I will not hand him a weapon he can’t put down. So I shut my mouth. I swallow it. I tape the scream into the hollow of my chest and try to live like everything is normal. But there’s no normal. God, I miss normal. I miss thinking I would always be safe.
At school, they call me names like they’ve never experienced this level of pain before. They come up with stories because the truth would crush them too, and their version is more fun to throw around. Boys say I spread my legs for them when I don’t. Girls say I sleep around like a whore. They take what a boy secretly lied to them about, and toss it at me, and call me disgusting.
I keep quiet. I’m always quiet…and quiet is an insult to them. They want to push me until I fight back.
You begin to believe the words that hit you the hardest. The same words he told me while he was destroying my life…while he was hurting my heart more than he was hurting my body…and he was fucking hurting my body.
He destroyed my head too. It didn’t even work the same way anymore. It didn’t want to wake up every morning because that meant we would just have to repeat the same cycle again—wake up, act normal, pretend I’m not on the verge of a panic attack all day, every day, pretend I don’t feel the constant pain even though it isn’t actually happening anymore.
