The Story I Never Told

December 5, 2019
I can’t breath.
The fluorescent lights shine through my eyelids.
There’s a hand squeezing mine urging me to stay calm.
There’s beeping and shouting and a dull scraping pain from inside me.
I’m panicking, hyperventilating, my body is going into shock.
We’re losing her
You need to breath.
A coldness creeps into my bones, a hopelessness fills my mind.
Is it over? I heard my own voice cracked and groggy and then there was nothing.
When the drugs wore off and I woke to the sound of my IV dripping I was numb, hallow and alone.
I still can’t breath.
When I’m drowning under dark waves my vision fills with static, ringing fills my ears and I lose my footing.
Suddenly I’m on the floor with a tear streaked face.
Inhale. Exhale. The feeling passes.
Some days are easier than others.
Still fresh every time it happens like I’m back on the table, the tiny heartbeat stops and I wish mine stopped with it.
Sometimes I wonder if ___ eyes would have been as ______ as his, or blue like mine.
Sometimes I wonder why I lived if _____ couldn’t.
The seasons have come and gone full circle but it’s still there, like a dark shadow in the corner of my eye at all times. It lurks and waits for the waves to pull me under.
He didn’t understand. Not when I pleaded, not when I cried and not when I begged. Not when my wrist were bloody and my hands were cold. He refused to give love and comfort for so long that when he did I eagerly accepted that empty embrace.
I was blinded by my emotions, blinded by an illusion that I couldn’t even see my own worth when I looked in the mirror.
Another six months but I walked away after too many red flags and too many nights I fell asleep in tears.
All the sickening games were slowly killing me.
It still hurts and I still taste the alcohol on his lips when I kissed him goodnight, passed out and oblivious to how sick I was.
All the days he slept through, all the times he poked and prodded and stung me in all my weakest spots just to wonder why I was upset.
He never called me baby, only the girls online.
But you can’t fix that with stuffed animals and comic books.
He couldn’t tell me why he left me in the dark after losing the life we made and he couldn’t back up his pretty words with actions in the end.
Now he’s back to his old ways and I’m trying to heal.
When you love someone pride isn’t in the equation but that’s something he’s never learned.
They call me things like toxic, bitch, shallow without knowing what I went through, what I continue to go through.
It’s okay that I’ve been painted as the bad guy, I don’t mind anymore because in my heart I know I did more than anyone else would have, that my love was real and pure and I took the blunt of it all.
They judge the surface and that’s their business, I was so angry and resentful but it fed the cruelty.
After everything I still feel comfort thinking back to Cheetos and chocolate milk.
How badly I wish he would have fought me and showed me all his tears and all his words were real, not fancy lies made up to touch my skin.
True colors can’t be overlooked and now loving myself is first priority because happiness is not something outside myself I tried to cling onto for so long.
I can’t breath, my vision is fuzzy and I tell myself to calm down.
Inhale. Exhale.
I am whole, I am not broken.
And I will keep getting up, keep trying and keep smiling as much as I can because one day I will wake up without a weight on my chest.
One day it will be sunlight shining through my eyelids, the sounds of laughter filling my ears and warmth in my bones and I’ll breath without telling myself I have to.