strangers and survival.

I just really need to get this off my chest.

I've made some mistakes. I don't feel like I need to go into them, but let your mind wander. This isn't looking for the sympathy vote, I just acknowledge that I'm human. We mess up. I'm come to terms with my past and it has shaped me into who I am today. I have moved on. It was really difficult to do and it definitely took time, but I'm in a good place now.

I think a lot of the reason why I'm okay is because the right people came into my life at the right time, and I'm forever grateful. They kept me up when all I wanted to do was lay at the bottom of the river and watch the world float on their kayaks, plunging their oars into the ice cold water, inches away from my face.

But no. I'm here. I'm a mermaid at heart, but I'm swimming through college, drowning in homework, rather than a body of water.
I'm alive.
Breathing.
Fingers unpruned.

I don't reflect often on that fateful July night- or June night? I'd rather not have a specific date in mind. I've chosen to forgive him. It puts my heart at rest. I can look at him in the grocery store as a familiar face, not a terror, but not a friendly one either. We are two strangers. Two people who met in past lives, but our paths will never intersect again because I have made that choice. This isn't out of spite, it is out of forgiveness and out of peace for myself.

I don't want to look at myself as a victim. Sure, I can't recall anything past walking up the stairs, begging for protection, waking up in an unfamiliar room and wiping away my dripping mascara as I climbed into my friend's car the next morning, hardly able to give directions through the veil of tears clinging to my eyelashes. But this still haunts me. I have forgiven, but this terrifies me. How easy it was for something like this to happen. How easy it could happen to someone else.

Now as I prepare my move home, I'm excited. I truly am. I'm not scared to see his face at safeway, like I said, he's a stranger. I'm excited to be home with the people I have chosen to let close to my heart. But my heart is hurting.

My love has taken what happened to me, personally. He swears if that guy makes a pass at him, or if he tries to be friendly that he he is not afraid of going to jail. It's a struggle for him to see him because of what he did to me. I'm very lucky to be with someone so protective of me, but I feel like he's making himself out to be the victim. "Do you know how hard it is to see him? Be in the same room with him?" he asks. Shouldn't those be the questions that I ask? But I don't. I've moved on. I wish he too could push that hatred away from his heart- look at him like a stranger like I do. Look at him like a stranger because I have to. I have to to survive.