Breathe

Breathe in, breathe out. That's all I can do, right? Even though each pull of oxygen makes the life within me hurt. Not like shards of glass, but instead like a bruise. Blood pushing up against the skin that just barely holds it beneath the surface. Hurts. Not so good. Hurts bad. Like...like a child in pain. Hurts like a whimper in the darkness. Like the wind knocked from my lungs in a fall. Or a punch in the stomach. Hurts like that.

They make it easier, my friends who know what he has done to me. They don't try to stick up for him as I expected. They tell me they are losing respect for him. That he doesn't deserve the agony I feel over him. Or my continued anxiety. In my heart I know that I don't want the hurt it would take to continue to be friends with him. We had a friendship. I don't think I can keep it up. Friends tell me he doesn't deserve it. He is so good. But he was bad to me. But he wasn't. He only did what I asked him. I needed an answer. And he gave me one. I thought I could live with it. But he is telling me to stop trying so what if I really do? Wouldn't it be easier to NOT feel this pain behind my skin?

Breathe, breathe, breathe. It hurts every single goddamn time. Life without love. Hurts.

I am loved. Just not in the way I want. Girls like being physical just as much as guys. Trouble is, I at least associate physicality with...feelings of a romantic nature. Why do guys not? How can holding someone by their soul not be twined in with feelings of, at the very least, lust?

I feel tired. Despite having slept all day, I feel exhausted. To bed now, I suppose. May I wake and find that this has all been a nightmare.

But I know better. Not even in narcotics induced sleep can I escape him. He hurts me again and again and again and he is not even himself conscious of the pain he inflicts.