[Lost] January Challenge - Broken

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

She was going to gut me. So I pulled a knife. I shook and cried that night and he held me and I thought I felt myself breaking apart. But, looking back, I think I was doing okay then. That was only the beginning. I had no idea what was to come.

One week later he was dead.

I worked through the pain. I gave my condolences to the right people. I smiled and let people say the things to me that made them feel better about themselves. I stood on the cathedral gate on Christmas Eve and faced the shadow of the man I loved, knowing that he’d not loved me back, and I didn’t step over the edge to join him.

I thought I had had my breaking point and survived it.

I thought I was done and could move on.

I had said goodbye.

Then I slept with a man he truly hated. I didn’t do it to prove a point. I reached out to a friend I didn’t even know I had and I broke over her like glass. Then I pretended to pick up the pieces and I carried myself away to mend. And I did it all over again.

Now my daughter has fallen for a Changeling. I’ve kept her from our world since I first left the Hedge but our world has seen fit to take her and suck her in anyway.

Yesterday, the woman who fed me poison every night of my Durance was brought to me at gunpoint by a man I’d left to go mad. If he’s broken, and he might well be, it’s because of me. Meanwhile, she is looking to be fixed.

And both of them want something from me that I don’t know how to give anymore.

I read his letter again tonight, and something in me snapped. I can’t bear his name anymore. I don’t want to remember. So the letter and the photograph are tied up in ribbon, and come Sunday, I will let the fire consume them, as his fire once consumed me.

Ice is like glass: a little pressure and it cracks; too much and it shatters.

If I am truly becoming lost, then self-destruction is the path that I choose. I will destroy myself before I let the world destroy me.

And maybe – just maybe – I’ll find the clarity to build myself anew from the pieces that remain.

Then again, maybe I won’t care anymore. Maybe I’ll be better off lost.