Chapter Text
My Dearest Monster,
I told myself I wouldn’t write to you again.
I’ve rehearsed a hundred versions of this moment. All of them stronger than this, all of them ending with me walking away, finally untouched by you. But, strength feels like a language I used to speak, and now I only remember fragments of it.
You’ve been in my dreams again.
Not the nightmares people expect. There's no screaming. No running. It’s worse than that. In them, you are gentle. You stand too close but don’t touch me, like you’re waiting for permission you never used to need. You say my name, the one you chose. It sounds softer than it ever did when I was yours.
I wake up reaching for you.
It makes me sick.
I hate that my body remembers you before my mind can catch up. That something in me still leans toward you like nothing I've ever felt in this dull existence. I go through my days pretending I’m whole, pretending I belong to myself again, but it feels like I’m wearing someone else’s life.
Maybe I am.
-:—— P. ——:-
P.s.
Do you think of me?
I ask myself that more than I should. It’s a quiet, humiliating question. Because I already know the answer doesn’t matter. You’re still here anyway. In the way I hesitate before I trust someone. In the way constant white noise feels safer than kindness. In the way I still expect to be watched.
You built something in me I don’t know how to undo.
And I don’t know if I’m writing this to ask you why…
or to ask if you ever meant it.