On the dark, heavy days, I pull myself out of bed by imagining your hand tugging on mine.

When I’ve misplaced my smile, I find it by remembering yours. 

When the world feels cruel and vile, I look at the sky and remember your eyes. 

When loving hurts too much, I remember how beautiful your love felt and that I’d like to make someone feel as special as I was to you. 

When living feels too hard, I remember your resilience and that you’d want me to be happy. 

So on these days, I live for you.

Discomfort said, “Was it really abuse though? We chose to love him, defend him, to be with him through it all." 

I replied, "We chose to love him, but we didn’t choose to be lied to, gaslighted, threatened, bruised, and baited with empty love. We chose to fight for someone we loved, but that didn’t give him the right to destroy us." 

"But despite him doing all those things, we stayed,” she countered. 

“Yes, because we believed all of his manipulation. We truly thought that we were in the wrong, and so we did everything we could to fix ourselves. He was able to deceive and control us since he knew all our weaknesses. We didn’t give him permission to do any of that. He said he loved us and we believed him, but one doesn’t purposely break and ruin the person they love. That is abuse.”

Fear said, “I don’t want to be powerless like that ever again." 

"We won’t. We’ll recognize it next time. We’ll be okay. He’s gone and we’re safe." 

Anger said, "How could he have done that to someone who only wanted to love him?" 

"I don’t know. But I do know that it highlights the stark contrast between his character and ours.”

Pity said, “I feel sorry for him. I wish he would change for the better.”

“Even though he hurt us, it’s hard not to feel bad for him. We will heal, but until he realizes his faults, he will remain stuck. In the end, he’s hurting himself the most." 

Shame said, "I wish I had loved myself more and treated myself better." 

"We made a mistake. We’ve learned from it and we have our whole life to right that wrong." 

Disgust was judgmental and asked, "How could I even love someone like that?”

“We didn’t know."  

Anger returned but couldn’t form any words. It was too much. We sat together in silence and waited for it to pass. 

Shock couldn’t stop repeating the same words over and over: "He never actually loved me." 

"That’s true, but him not loving you, helped you love yourself." 

Hurt was the hardest to listen to because she asked the most difficult question of all: "How could he have been so heartless and cruel?”

“We’ll never know. And that’s okay. That’s not what matters. Despite all the wounds he gave us, our heart it still strong; we are still capable of loving and I think that’s beautiful." 

Sadness was overwhelming. She cried for the girl we were then, for the woman we are now and for the boy he still is and probably always will be. I held her and reminded her that it was terrible but it’s over now. We’re not there anymore.

Grief was the last one to the party. We mourned the death of our past self. We were trying to mourn the boy we loved when she asked, "How do we mourn someone who never really existed?" 

"He might not have existed, but there were moments when he was real to us. So we’ll mourn him the same way we’ve mourned everyone else: we’ll remember and move on.”