You.
If the princess doesn’t get her way, she’ll kill herself. The princess always thought she was Queen of the castle but she was never even in line for the throne. The Queen takes care of her kingdom and reigns with her King. They are the ones you run to when it’s time to go to war. So if the princess thought she was in charge, why did she and her prince always run to the King and Queen?
I know that I can never take it back. I know that I can never undo all the damage that you did to my psyche. I know I can never take back the burn mark you left on my soul, the mark of your hand on my very core. I know all these things. What I don’t know is why I’m still so angry. I’m not this mean or angry or anything like that. I’ve never thought of myself like that, not really. But you. You made me into this monster that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know who I was looking at in the mirror. I didn’t love myself anymore. I didn’t like anything about myself.
I felt like I was just a hair away from losing myself, my mind, my life every single second you were around. Other days, I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything and I had to wear a mask. If I didn’t, my entire world would fall apart because you would hurt everyone I love. You would lash out and scream and kick and get mind-blowingly high. You ruined everything if you didn’t get your way. And I had to be the one to take it all just so everyone around me wasn’t affected by the blows. No one understood it though. Not really. And that’s okay because it meant they were safe. That’s all I wanted. I wanted them to be safe from you. I never wanted you to be happy though, I wanted you to suffer. That is how I know you made me into someone I wasn’t and I wasn’t like this. I wasn’t this cruel or sadistic or crazy-sounding, it was your burn mark on my soul. It was your grip on my throat getting ever so tighter.
At first, I thought I was going to be alright again. I thought the love of my life and I were going to be safe again. I thought we could get our life back on track and you were allowing me to be happy again. I thought after letting others, who were toxic to my life, go and moving in with you would finally give me some peace of mind. I thought I’d finally have a friend again after not having anyone there for me when I was suicidal and so utterly alone. I thought all these changes would benefit us. I thought we would both have a friend in you and your husband. I thought after 6 months of having to be away from my fiancé, now husband, I was going to be happier than I had ever been. I never knew..it could ruin me. Ruin my husband. I never knew that everything involving you would rip our lives apart.
Now I understand you think you are a victim in everything even though, you were the one who screamed at me. I understand that you think you have every right to me and you think I’m your property. I understand that you HAD to be my only friend and I tried to have another, you would tear her down and ruin it with all your craziness and lies. I understand you put me on a pedestal because you lost your mother and you thought I could fill the void. I understand you wanted a friend but the way you behaved, called for a mother. I understand that you saw me in a certain light because I was kind and patient. I understand that you built up this unreachable and impossible image of me in your head but you need to understand that I am not responsible for that. I am human and I am vulnerable. No one is that patient and everyone has a limit. You just never saw mine. You never saw or respected my boundaries even if I laid them out for you plain and simple. And you would say that you can’t live your lifestyle because I didn’t like it, I told you why and I told you the damage it did to me but I know you didn’t care. You never cared about my boundaries or why I have them.
You never saw how mad I was at you. Or how I screamed and cried into my pillow because I was left alone to deal with your cruelty. You never saw how you disrespected me, on a daily basis, by just being your destructive self. You never saw how hard I fought to keep my sanity together. You never saw how rude you were to my husband and obscene you were around my husband. You never saw how disgusted I was because you wanted to flaunt your father's money around me. You never saw how my self-esteem was shot every time you talked about my weight to my face. Or how sick I made myself because I couldn’t bring myself to eat after you mocked my weight. You never see how damaging you are to anyone around you. You never see anything besides yourself because it’s just so unfathomable to do so!
If you truly saw me in such a good way, put me on a pedestal or saw me as a replacement mother then why did you scream at me because I ate a box of macaroni and cheese? I did it once in the 2 and a half weeks where all I knew was safe to eat was my cereal and potatoes. I had to leave the apartment when you did that and your husband had to calm you down and convince you to stay in the house. He had to remind you, in a way that didn't make you have a meltdown, that you’re always the victim and you did nothing wrong. And when you screamed at my husband about how I wouldn’t even share some honeydew melon with you, you hit a sensitive nerve. He got in your face and screamed at you that I’m the kindest person he’s ever met and if you slap me in the face, I would say sorry for hurting your hand. He walked away and went to our room. You stood there in silence, not knowing what to do. I waited outside for my mom to pick me up and I cried in her car for an hour. If I was such a good person, why would you destroy the kitchen every time you made dinner and never cleaned it? You knew that I hated the way you lived in complete disarray and filth. You would throw down everything you had in your hands from wherever when you went everywhere. You constantly left food out so we ended up getting cockroaches in the kitchen. You always depended on me to clean the kitchen and when my chronic illness, my anxiety or my lower back pain got the better of me, I couldn’t clean it for a few days. When I couldn’t be your maid, you always threw a fit because nothing was clean and we didn’t have any clean pans and because you didn’t cook, everyone would decide to eat out. After a few days of this, you would get mad at “everyone” for eating out. When really, you were just mad at me because I wasn’t your maid when you “needed” me to be. I told you that I hated that several times for a year and a half but you never listened. You always said you were sorry and maybe I was taking it the wrong way and you “promised” to help me “tomorrow”. Well, tomorrow always came but you never lifted a finger. Oh no, wait I’m forgetting about the handful of times you did help me and would scream at whoever made the tiniest of messes in “your” kitchen. On top of that, you damn near lived in the living room. It wasn’t OUR living room, it was YOUR bedroom because your husband moves too much in his sleep and he would “hurt” you in the night. You dragged all your filth into the living room and even when my husband's best friend had to move into our dining room after a bad break up, he kept his area 10x cleaner than you ever attempted to. I don’t have a sense of smell (Not completely gone because I can still taste but it’s mostly gone due to chronic sinus infections) so I never knew what my mom was talking about when she said our living room smelled like your vagina. She came over one day and was utterly repulsed at the god awful smell you left in the living room, on the couch all because you lived on it and left your underwear on it all the time. My mom finally saw first hand at how I would clean and literally in the middle of it, you would drop all your shit and shoes and clothes everywhere. When she left, she couldn’t believe the disrespect that you showed her that day.
If I was such a good friend to you then why did you steal $700 from your dad and give me $200 to shut up and not tell anyone? Then when it finally came to light, you tried to throw me under the bus because of it? And my husband and I waited outside for you to leave, just so we could go run into our room and barricade the door with our laundry baskets. If I was your “best friend”, why did you have to get so high that we thought you OD’ed? While in your high state of mind, you took out all of your real feelings on everyone in the house and scared my saving grace to death because she thought you would hurt her unborn child. But thankfully we lived with 3 large men so they stopped you. Your husband left you the next morning for work, in our care without asking, because he thought you were sober enough. My husband stayed home with you all day to make sure you didn’t stop breathing. And I went out and ran to my mother because I had no idea what to do. When it was time for my husband and his best friend to go to work, they lost their jobs because of a technicality. Because they stayed to take care of you when your husband should’ve stayed home instead. Because you weren’t getting enough attention from me or everyone, you went and raided your dad's stash of medical supplies leftover from your dead mother’s cancer battle and found fentanyl patches. You were tripping hard, driving and acting like you were the goddamn victim in everything for a week and no one knew because a drug addict knows how to hide it. But because you did that, you ruined mine and my husband's financial well-being. I can’t even imagine what my future is going to look like anymore because you took away the one time we were financially set and happy together.
I’m free now. We moved out. It’s been over a month now. You finally stopped trying to talk to me. You stopped trying to come over. You stopped harassing me and my real best friend. I guess that’s something I can..give a smidge of credit to you for. I can say that, in a way, I finally got a friend. A friend I had had for years but had lost touch with. No…no, fuck that. You get no credit. None! Fuck that. She reached out to me and I ran to her like I was going to be killed. She came into my life when I needed her the most. She wasn’t in a perfect situation either so in a way, we saved each other. But I will always give her the credit for saving me from you. I was finally, FINALLY able to start to be happy again. I had a friend and that was all I wanted. She let me cry, vent, was there when I needed help dealing with you and she did it all while she was pregnant. And that you couldn’t stand. You still can’t stand her, not only for stealing me and having a better friendship with me but for the fact that she has a baby. It is not her fault that you got an STD and on top of that, have active cervical cancer cells. You ruined your chances of having a baby and that doesn’t give you the right to try to push her into a wall while 9 months pregnant because you got unbelievably high on a fentanyl patch. You don’t get to touch her. You don’t get to be jealous or angry at her for something she didn’t do.
I’m now expecting you to come back or to try to claw your way back into my life. I’m waiting for you to text me and get passive-aggressive about how I haven’t texted you or hung out with you. I think you might’ve gotten the picture but I don’t think that’s possible. Maybe you’re mad at me? Or maybe you’re having an “episode” which gives you an excuse to be rude to or ignore everyone around you? Or maybe you’re just too high to function again? I don’t..I can’t give in to this bliss in the lack of your presence. I’m happy..ish? I just want those pieces of myself that you took back. I wanna be able to live my life and be myself again. The sad part is, I don’t think I know who that is anymore. Can I start over? Can I get over it? In time, yes. But right now? No. I don’t know yet. And it’s sickening and festering. I’m just waiting for my whole world to fall apart again. I want to be happy and I have moments where I’m happy but..I know that I’m not because I don’t have closure and I’m not over everything you did to me.
After it was finally over, I moved out of your apartment but because you and your husband were always late or short on rent, we had to move into another apartment in the same complex. You two ruined our rental history so I’m only partially free from you. We also still have the car we paid $1000 for, that was your husband's old car. But when your mother died, you both got new cars so we got his old one. With the icing on top, your husband is incompetent and doesn’t keep track of anything, (or he has the title and just refuses to sign it over) so he has to buy a new title to our car. It’s our only way of transportation that doesn’t completely wreck everyone's way of life. Yes, our best friends have 2 cars but they also have a baby to take care of now so they can help but only so much. I’m waiting for you to throw a fit and manipulate your way into your husband's head and convince him that you need to take the car back. All because I don’t want to be your friend anymore. Who fucking does that though? You would. Now I’m just sitting on my ass and waiting for you to rip another piece from us again. When’s it coming? What are you doing? What are you planning? Are you looking for a way to hurt me again? I can’t stand living like this. I tell people to stay away from you and I tell them little things you have done to not only me but everyone, including your husband, and they can’t believe it. I've been told that it sounds like I have a mild form of PTSD. There are clear reasons why I barely left the house, why I never left my room, why I never told you what was bothering me when you KNEW there was something wrong, why I never truly opened up to you and why it always seemed like I was just a little too eager to move out. Even if you didn’t or don’t see the truth, eventually I’ll be able to let this burn mark of yours go.
I moved in with my husband, his best friend who became a brother to me and my best friend of 10 years who fell in love with my husband's best friend. I have the kitchen constantly clean and even if it’s a little dirty, my heart doesn’t drop into my ass every time I come out of my room. I’m allowed to come out of my room and be in the living room without feeling like I’m invading someone's space. I’m allowed to be angry and show how I feel. But I might have PTSD now. Even with that possibility, I feel like I have to be 100% perfect all the time and it’s so damaging to my self-esteem. Any time I mess up just a little bit, I have a nervous breakdown because I’m terrified that someone is going to scream at me or hurt me. I expect the ones I live with now, the people I love with all my heart, to explode at me. I still live like I’m walking on eggshells but I know, logically, that I’m not. I locked myself out of my best friend's truck at Wal-Mart and thankfully, strangers helped me and I got in. When I came home, I ran to my room and cried like I was still living with you. My husband came in and hugged me and talked me down and I calmed down enough to come out and talk to them. They weren’t even mad, they said it’s ok and these things happen. She hugged me tight, said that she’s not mad, she’s locked herself outta that truck more times than she’s willing to admit and that she loves me.
I think that’s the difference. When they say they love me, it feels real. It’s genuine. And I’m terrified. Of course, I’m scared though. I’m scared that it won’t be real anymore or that this life I have now is all a dream. I keep waking up though and I’m still here, I’m still in a new apartment with the man I love and my best friends. In all that pain and suffering..I never thought I would get here. I was in a cycle of doubt, anxiety and endless darkness. I never believed I could get out of there because you stole every shred of hope I had, every chance you could without fail. So why would I believe that I would be free? I had no “real” reason to not live with you and your husband if we were “happy” and like a “family”, so why would we want to leave right? Nope! I had plenty of reasons to leave. But thankfully, my best friend was pregnant and needed more space for her baby boy. And thankfully, she fell in love with my husband's best friend so where he goes, my husband goes and where my husband goes, I go too. Through a beautiful chain reaction, I was given my freedom from you.
My mother asked me how does it feel not living with you anymore, besides all the craziness and the dictatorship. I took a long time to answer because yes, it’s great for several reasons but I said: “It’s..quiet”. It’s so..quiet and all I want to do is cry. Cry for the pieces of myself I lost but cry for the weight of you is finally off my heart and my shoulders. Yes, your mark is still there but it’ll fade, they all have and they all do. I can breathe and cry and speak and be me again. Yes, there are pieces of me that have been taken but..I’ve grown before and I can grow again. I have to, not only for my loved ones but for me. I have to do things for myself again. I want to and that is what matters. I want to live life again and I feel like I will be able to soon. I will be able to forget you and give myself closure. Maybe not today but I will.
I will be able to let it go. I will let go of the damage you did to me, Shaila.
