I forgot how often you used to slip into the champagne room behind the visible spots in my irises. You would ask me to dance, and I would laugh because I had always been afraid of stepping on other people's toes. You taught me that a little pain is sometimes better than no feeling at all, and I took that to heart.

My chest has never ached more, ever since you planted that seed in the garden I had been saving for the past three thousand seventy seven days for someone I believed would come to me in the form of a prince in a gleaming pumpkin chariot. It was that afternoon eight years ago that I decided I would wait, whether it be in a tower covered in thorny vines or asleep and guarded by a dragon the size of Mars, for someone to save me from the fantasy created in my own mind. All that time relying on fairy tale love stories vanished in a moment of betrayal like an antique grandfather clock tumbling down flight after flight of stairs.

The sound was like that of a mistreated music box, like the one you gave me as a gift for our last day together, or at least one that was happy. I thought it childish then, but I suppose it was fitting from the way I regarded you unconditionally. I should have grown up faster, but you helped me through it quite effectively. I just wish you hadn't absconded from the scene with a stolen innocence you didn't deserve to have. I like to think you keep all of them, the naïvités, the wonders, the trusts you stole from girls, in glass jars lining the windowsills in your bedroom.

You never allowed me even a peek inside, after all. I always wondered what you kept in there. Sometimes I feared there was another girl, bound and gagged and rolled beneath the bed like a doll made of flesh and hair and bone that you could only take out and play with on certain occasions. Other times, I believed you were the tamer of great beasts, and housed illegal Bengal tigers and pronghorn deer in specially fabricated cages among your dresser and nightstand.

You did have a way with your words; I would know. Your voice wasn't quite poison, but tasted like peppermint schnapps on my lips and whiskey on my throat. I was afraid to taste when you first led me away from the bustle and noise of public life, but I soon became alcoholic and revered the high I was lifted into upon your smiles and the sight of your jawline silhouetted against the light of the rising sun filtered through thin white curtains on a cloudy day.

Coming down from it was a sudden and excruciating crash I haven't yet recovered from. I was left in a pile of ripped clothes and broken bones and organs that had burst with the pressure of the altitude I had just tumbled so unceremoniously from. Everything is a mess, both figuratively and literally.

I cannot take any time to clean any belongings. I dig through the growing pile of laundry in the middle of the floor sometimes, searching for any hint or whiff of you. The smell of mint and liquor, a nicotine stain from your chain of cigarettes, a rip in the hem if a shirt you liked a little too much: I would hold that bit of fabric, so irrelevant before your being entered it, with less than a memory and worship it until the smell faded, or the stain rubbed off, or the rip widened with my worrying and resembled less a bit of the scar on the edge of your thumb from when you cut yourself cooking dinner for the birthday and more like a rift in my lungs that leaves me wheezing at the slightest thought of you. An ache in my rib cage that won't go away gave away that little injury. I lost my breath in the folds of fabric a lot after you left. I'm afraid of washing any piece of clothing I wore in your presence for fear if washing any of you away.

I can't blame that compulsion on your lacking in my life, though, for I practiced this long before you even noticed me. A brush in passing, a shared glance in a crowded room, would force me to stuff that outfit out of sight in the back of my closet. I was still so afraid of your toxic smile, I would only allow myself even a quick peek at the clothes in the dead of night, when even my conscience was slumbering. Fear of insanity and of your reputation kept me safe for long enough, but I was already gone when you took initiative and approached me two hundred and sixteen days ago with a hidden offer of escape tucked behind your ear. You were exactly what I was looking for.

But now I realize I am not grateful for you saving me from myself. Although it was what I desired for longer than I have been logical, I've realized since that I have to save myself.

No longer do I keep ***** clothes on the floor. I need things to wear in my life, and I can no longer use that as an excuse to stay home mooning over a lack of even blurry pictures of you. I am no longer a lingering drunk, so I no longer stumble embarrassingly down the street as my old friends stare on sadly. I am independent and I always have been.

The only thing I can really thank you for is bringing me to realize that fact. I cannot even thank you for the adventures you took me on because you abandoned me in a trip to the atoll of islands you claimed had been your home in a past life. I had to fashion a raft out of bamboo and palm leaves and vines and reeds to escape, and on the journey home, I found a piece of myself I should have discovered long ago.

I'm starting to see that you hid it from me to keep me loyal. I can't say I hate you for that.