I say, “Stop,” but she doesn’t stop.
I say, “Leave me alone,” but instead she steps closer, until her nose is touching mine, and maybe I’d think she wants to kiss me if she wasn’t screaming at me instead.
I say, “Stop yelling at me,” but her voice gets louder and shriller and something in me snaps. It’s been two years of silence, two years of leaving voicemails at midnight, apologizing for something I had no idea I’d done wrong. I wished on every star, every dandelion, every 11:11 just to know why, because she’s been my safe zone since we were five and I still don’t understand why it all disappeared. And now she’s telling me that I was charity and her good will ran out.

She says, “It’s her fault.”
She says, “She’s crazy.”
She says, “She tried to **** me.”
Not true.

I lost control. But maybe I don’t want it back.

If you asked her whether she considered herself brave, she’d say no.

She’d say that she is the most cowardly person she knows. When she was a little girl she read stories about wizards and knights in shining armor who saved the day and thought that that could never be her.

She thought it was her fate to be the princess in the ivory tower, trembling in the corner. Leave the dragon-slaying to someone else; she’d never be the hero who saved the kingdom. All she’d ever be was the princess who needed somebody else to fight the battle.

You think that you are a coward, but believe me, if you were any braver, you’d be a lioness. You do not face the world with your fists up, but with your hands open.
You give and give and give little pieces of yourself; you love like a Category Five Hurricane.
Furious.

You think that you are a coward because you are afraid of so much. Heights, the dark, loud noises, pretty girls, spiders, other human beings.

Anxiety-ridden, picking at the skin around your nails, praying to God that no one can see how close you are to falling apart.
You think that you are a coward because you are afraid, but let me ask you this: how many people ever come face to face with their worst fears?

Most people never will.

But you, you face yours every day.