The Way I Used to Be

And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.

“It’s true. Just because someone has always been seen as this incredible person—this hero—it doesn’t mean that’s the truth. Or that’s who they really are,” I say.

I feel bad for him; he is probably really good at making small talk with girls. This isn’t his fault.

A ROOM WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A BODY WITHOUT A SOUL—CICERO.

And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.

I crunch my teeth together to keep myself from screaming. Screaming in general, screaming at him to get his hands off me, screaming for help, screaming because I can’t make sense out of anything that is happening, has happened, will happen. Screaming because I still feel like I’m back there, always back there, in my heart I’m still that girl.

“And now you have a crush on a girl named Mara?”

I have a terrible thought: I like him. I really, really like him. Like, love-like him. Like, with my metaphorical heart. Like, if I had an x-ray, it would show an arrow lodged right into the center of that bloody, bleeding mass of muscle in my chest. And I know, somehow, that things have changed between us.

“It’s called tasting, maybe you’ve heard of it?”

Because I let them push me around just like I let everyone push me around. I let them make me into a person who doesn’t know when to speak the hell up, a person who gives up control over her life, over her body, over everything. I do what they tell me to do, what everyone tells me to do. Why didn’t they ever teach me to stand up for myself?