From the Ashes…

CW: reference to sexual assault, abusers

To my best friend, I love you now, I loved you then, I love you always

I remember the first time I saw you. You smiled at me, and I knew I loved you. You looked at me in a way that made me feel stronger, I felt bigger. You saw me for who I was and what I was, and for that I loved you.
There was something about you, you had a presence, a way of holding yourself to the world that was defiant. You were careless and beautiful. So beautiful. But you didn’t see it, maybe you weren’t aware of it. You could capture rooms, you were effortless.
Remember the days we spent together, soaking in the sun and dancing till dawn. We’d mix cheap vodka with lemonade and forget about the world outside. Remember the days when we would just wake up and play, and you told me you loved me too.
From then it was set in stone. We were inseparable.
But we were innocent, we were naive in our ignorance of the world. We learnt to love ourselves, love each other and love the world in our blissful childish ways. Tiny sampling’s, hungry for what the world had to offer. At every opportunity we gave ourselves to the world. A little piece of our heart carelessly flung out, hoping our world would love us back.
Our world took us to unimaginable places, we travelled and grew and gave up our hearts a little bit more.
But something changed one night.
One night that changed it all.
You see nobody warned us. They didn’t tell us about the monsters, who creeped in the shadows. Hiding in plain sight.
The monsters that pray on the innocent, the young, the beautiful and the brave.
That night. I’ll remember it forever.
As soon as I woke up I knew something was wrong. I felt it. Deep inside, some distant place where darkness lurked, I felt it. I felt your pain. I heard you scream my name even though your lips had never parted.
I woke up scared. I had never felt fear, but the monsters saw to that.
I ran, I couldn’t breathe. It still haunts me now. Why didn’t I do something. I should have done something.
I had to find you. I found you.
You looked so small.
Something had shattered. Something deep inside of you.
He broke it. He stole something from you, when it was never his to take. That little precious piece of your soul, the little part that belongs only to you. Your innocence, your truth, your trust.
He came in the middle of the night.
And that little piece of your soul that let you fall in love with the world like a child was violated.
He Tore it , ripped it out like ripping a foetus from a mother’s stomach.
Twisted, sick, evil.
In that moment he disregarded you. You weren’t a person in his eyes. No one was. Cannibal.

I saw you then. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand.
That little piece of you that he’d broken. I wanted to give you mine. Wanted to fix it. But it doesn’t work like that. I was still a child.

The months that followed were hard. I’ll never forgive myself for not knowing the pain you felt. The sickness that feeds on your soul, like a flesh eating parasite. Minute by minute it cuts deeper.

I was selfish. I wasn’t a friend. I was caught up in a love that I didn’t understand. I didn’t see how our roots had grown together and I couldn’t understand your pain.

But when you love someone so strongly. With that childhood love, it doesn’t go away. The years go by and the roots go stronger.

A few years later, the monsters came for me.
And my eyes were opened. Brutal and cruel my innocence laid bare, naked and vulnerable I shattered.

I fell, I sunk into a void.

But you were there. My god how I wish I didn’t find you there in that dark abyss. I would trade my soul, I would trade my world if it meant protecting you. But we can’t protect ourselves from all the monsters. There are too many, and they disguise themselves so well.

Something changed, something turned. And our little broken, child like souls, that had been lost, forgotten and abandoned were remembered. Deep in the depths of our consciousness they held out their hands and for the first time, someone found them. Yours found mine, mine found yours and together they wept.

They wept, and clung to each other with sorrow and misery, grief and loss.

But they remembered. Remembered how we fell in love, like saplings, growing together. Remember how they had fallen in love with each other, and they wept again, because they would never be those child like souls again.

Whilst this was going on, we, me and you, we sat unaware. We didn’t realise that slowly and surely a fire was begin to burn again.

These little souls of ours were growing stronger. Wrapped around each other. Growing as one.

They sat there in the dark. They gave us time. But they were plotting, and as we began to take our first steps. As we began to stand on our own two feet it gave them strength.

Rekindled from the ashes, they fed. Instead of two tiny hearts trying to find their way, they were one. They were becoming bigger. Badder. Stronger.

And this time: deadly.

They knew pain. They knew harm. They have the battle scars to prove it.
But they had a secret, one they needed us to know.
Nothing is more terrifying than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.
And nothing is more invincible than that woman’s love for her soul mate, whose soul has been violated at the hands of monsters as well.

Through torture, through agonising pain, we never lost the love we had. We never forgot the love we shared. They may write epic stories about two people falling in love. No poem, no sonnet, no heart felt romance can compete with the love I feel for you and the love you feel for me and the ways our souls are bound forever.