The Girl with Tired Eyes and a Broken Chest

There was a point in time when I loved you—as much as a doe-eyed girl of 15 can claim to love anyone. We had passed over the threshold of childhood and into the realm of adolescence, and you were my first taste of “grown up.”

You were different than the other boys. They blathered on about video games and Yu-Gi-Oh! and all other subjects profoundly uninteresting to young girls. But you. You were different. You talked about love, and philosophy, and the origin of my favorite words, and the themes of my favorite novels. You spoke, and I listened, because you made me think. You made me see things and understand them. And at the same time, you saw me and understood.

I had it all figured out. Life was no mystery to the fiery girl with the blue eyes. Everyone said they were green, but she knew the yellow ring around the pupil just made them look that way. They were blue. Later, I learned that green eyes were rarer, so then—they were green. I was so certain about so many things, except myself. You knew this, and you used it to your advantage.

I was not yet fully molded into the person I was to become, and you took it upon yourself to be the sculptor. So, in true sculptor fashion, you designed your creation so that it would serve you in some way, like a pot does the potter. You had me trained, like your pet, to obey and to entertain. However, I didn’t mind because—as your pet—my entire world revolved around one thing.

You. You were my reason, my unspoken answer to every question raised.

“I thought you were growing out your hair?" He doesn’t like it long.

“Why have you started wearing so much makeup" He says my face is too plain.

“Why did you choose that college?” He’s lonely there.

“Why are you so hard on yourself?” He says I’m not enough.

You were everything. I felt myself slipping away as you began to occupy every corner of my being, every inch of my consciousness. You were memorialized there, like a sad park bench, dedicated and bearing a name with a reason to be remembered. I would not allow myself to forget because, in my naïveté, I decided you had done something worth remembering. In reality, you deserved to be forgotten, to fade into subconscious, like a nightmare that becomes hazy after the dreamer wakes from the dream.

You were my dream, turned nightmare in the blink of an eye. Compliments turned to insults as love turned to lust, and pleasure turned to pain. I felt your open hand closing into a fist at the same time that your heart closed and became a fortress that I couldn’t penetrate. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be shut out by the one whose name is etched across your heart? Do you know the pain that comes with removing that mark? All my hopes were tied up in you, and I had to cut the ties with the knife you used to carve your name into my skin. You used the blood to write a promise to another, that you would never make her bleed.

You changed me. The doe-eyed girl of 15 became the girl with tired eyes and a broken chest by 18. I still hear your voice echoing through my mind, disguised in an attempt to trick me into hearing myself. The lies you fed me took root, deeply, completely. The version of myself you painted for me lingers; my body and my being still seem unremarkable. When he looks at me now, every part of me begs him to look away, to let me hide myself. The look on his face is not so unlike yours that night in the park three years ago. Like yours, his tongue cannot seem to form the word “beautiful;” he stumbles even over “pretty” in the same way I’ve heard before. Yet, he says, “I love you,” and never tries to blame it on the alcohol. This gives me hope.