Hey friend. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, I’m not really sure why. Maybe you’re always a little bit on my mind, even if I try to think about other things.
I wanna talk about the hard stuff. The stuff we couldn’t put into words when we were 6 years old. Or 10 and 16 years old. The stuff we didn’t really understand. You were my best friend. And I had my issues, my weirdness. My traumas. But you… I think you were going through so much worse and I didn’t know. I still don’t really know. I just want to ask you… were you safe?
I wasn’t safe that one night alone in the den on the pull-out sofa. I don’t know how I knew I wasn’t safe. I don’t know what made me flip over and try to protect myself. But he came in anyway and did what he did. And I think about that a lot. Because the second I told my safe people, a wall of protection came around me and I never had a sleepover with anyone ever again. I was protected.
What about you? Did it happen to you? Did you ever have peace? He was supposed to be your protector. And he was a monster. Did anyone ever listen to you? Were your siblings safe? Did you grow up and move away and cut off all contact, or is he still there, fluttering around the edges of your life, reminding you that he is undefeated?
There were rumors of why you moved, but I never knew them until I was an adult. The day I told you what happened, we were both so young. I shouldn’t have said anything to you when I didn’t fully understand it. You went so catatonic, just sitting on the swing in my orchard, staring forward. I didn’t understand that. I thought you were being goofy. I thought you didn’t believe me. I did anything I could to try to “cheer you up”, and I honestly… don’t remember what happened after that.
When I saw you at your cousin’s wedding, he wasn’t there and I felt like we had one of the best weekends of our friendship. When we went to a Celtic Festival. It was the first time I had seen him since that night. He grabbed my sides and roared to give me a jump scare. And I didn’t know what to do, but you pulled me away and while we hustled far away from his sneering chuckle, you whispered, “I hate (him).” With so much anger, I suddenly realized… what if I’m not the only one? What if you lived in that scared moment every night of your life? What if there was no one to slam down a wall of safety?
A, I think about it. And if it didn’t happen to you… I’m sorry it happened to your friends. I’m sorry you couldn’t trust him. I’m sorry he made you lose people. Like you slowly lost me. I think about you so often. When we reconnected on social media and chatted a bit, you said that your parents were still married. That your family was all in the same general area. And it hurt my heart. It made me so angry. Nothing ever happened to him? He just stayed married to your gentle, happy, crunchy mom… who danced like a fairy and laughed with her head back and her curls bouncing.
I just want to know what happened. I wanna know if you’re okay. I wanna know if you’re hurting. I wanna know if I can help at all. I couldn’t help you then. Maybe I still can’t. But if you ever need to talk about it… from someone who might have seen a small part of what your secrets were… I am here.
Love always,
Me.
No comments:
Post a Comment