Sometimes I think you got the worst of me. A product of emotional abuse, a consequence of all my longing, the effect of both trauma and growing older. I wish there had been a forewarning, that I could’ve prepared myself for the time I really met you. I was high and sad and alone and I don’t want you to think of me as sad. But I was tired and frail and full of so much anger and resentment. I never looked more like my mother. You don’t know me; the dreamer, or me; the happy girl dancing in her room to music I know you’d like. He never liked my taste in music. And I think of a way to prove it to you, to somehow show you I am more than the culmination of everything he’s put me through. but I don’t know how to make someone believe in a me they’ve never seen exist. And I wonder if my life is now going to be a product of all the hurt you saw in me. I wonder if I’ll ever actually be brave, because brave girls don’t stay when he says mean things. I think I would’ve left if you asked me to, but I know there’s only so much a person can do with someone full of pain before they’re consumed by it. I can be better, I promise.