I was somebody before the wounds you wove into my skin wore me down. Back when the leaves were still green and the sun still shone, when everything was light. Now, I look in the mirror and see how months have been worn into my eyes. Tear stains cascade down cheeks.

I can't go back. I can't move forward. Motionless.

You walked into my life with a force, strong and blinding, and I fell. Not at first, not quickly, but one day at a time. And after days turned into weeks and weeks to months, I surrendered to the beat beneath my breast.

Captured by the charm... the acceptance, the flow of your words pressed up against my ear. Captured by your ability to twirl deceit between your fingers, curling those tainted tips into the palm of my hand.

Our love grew as a vine around us, our bodies into one. Under the constellations it grew. On the sands of beaches we called our own, it grew. Four hundred and sixteen days it flourished.

Before it shattered.

My puzzle piece is missing, the one painted glossily with confidence and knowledge of self-worth. It may be buried in the back pocket of one of those pairs of khaki shorts you always wore, in case you ever felt the impulse to return it, an apology. I, with a more practical approach, see my puzzle piece laying at the bottom of the deepest and darkest ocean, in the farthest of lands, a little part of it's paint disappearing each day. You, having hurled it there, along with all the other pieces of me you stole.

How can I be mad... you were so sly, stealing only small bits so I could not notice until the day when I looked in the mirror to see the lost months worn into my eyes and the tear stains on my cheeks and the gaping hole in my chest. Utterly exposed. I'm never getting my pieces back, am I?

I was somebody before you, but I cannot seem to find the corner in which that person is hiding. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Ready or not, here I come.

Nowhere to be found.

I was somebody before I lost you, before I lost myself.

A day, one that cannot be detailed with any significance, my body began swaying back and forth. For hours, back and forth, back and forth. I licked my lips and tasted the ocean's salt on my lips. Back and forth. Open your eyes. I did, eventually, only to realize I was drifting in the open sea, and slowly, I was drifting away from solid ground.

Reality is lost.

I cannot. I will not. I shall not. Commandments. Mine. I cannot let my heart drop, a pin to the floor, making the smallest of sounds, at the mention of three consonants and a vowel. A name. Not intended to do harm. Yet, holds the ability to alter the weight of the world. Your gravitational pull on my life astonishes me all the time. After everything, it's still there.

The night is clear, not crystal, but clear all the same.
... Somebody else
... I'm so sorry
I still love you, but it's not the same...

Both shedding tears. My inability to understand, to accept, slapped me across my face. It hasn't stopped slapping me since. Our tears fell at the same time. I watched them, utterly aware that my tears and his were not the same.

Struggling to speak, anything... I told you it had all been a lie. I wish I did not believe that. I wish I believed there was time with you and me, when the leaves were still green and the sun still shone, when everything was light. Someday I'll  feel that warmth again.

Rain began to drop after words were said, decisions made. Droplets enveloping me. Attempted consolation. Walked away, crashed into a wave of pain.

I was somebody before you decided that I wasn't.

Paralysis.
A state of helpless inactivity, or inability to act.

I asked mine well. Tucking it tightly into confines only I could see. Until the breakdowns began.

They started without any warning. Masked beneath cheap vodka and carbonated chasers. Finding myself along, crouched in the last stall, my prison. Overwhelmed by all the unnamed sorrow held within myself, bubbling up. I was a volcano simply waiting to erupt.

These late night disintegrations initiated the skeptical looks,, the "Are you okays?"
Denial is the name of the game.

235 days is 5,640 hours. 5,640 hours is 338,400 minutes.
Three hundred and thirty-eigh thousand, four hundred minutes is a long time to be lingering in sadness.

I am blind. A thick glaze of misconception has set upon the hazel of each iris, spreading to the depths of my pupils. Glass, puddles, shadows... all cast back the reflection of mediocrity.

Atelphobia; the fear of not being good enough. Too big. Not flat enough. Must be skinnier. Ugly. My skin, my insides, my soul, all which became the problem.

I was somebody before I decided that I wasn't.

In the end everything in the kitchen sink that is the world was swept away into my drain. I am left to deal. But the wind keeps pushing me backward and the leaves won't bloom, they're supposed to but they won't. Stubborn. And the sun has hidden its face behind the clouds and there is no light and you keep knocking me down. You keep knocking me down.

You keep knocking me down.

Am I ever going to be able to pull myself off the ground?

I was somebody.