Isolation

Her lover was like a beautiful rose that climbed up her throat, thorns nailing her tongue.

Being with him was like being in a train wreck, a beautiful disaster that only snowballed, picking up debris along the way. Any small deviation from his valued idea of “perfection” only roused his anger, and she was the one to suffer. But it was only natural with the way that he was escalating that he would derail sooner or later, taking their world with him.

And one of those deviations was that she had been a firm believer in the fact that the biggest illusion in life was the illusion of separation, of distance. And that shame and its child–silence–was its keeper. And connection was what kept people grounded. And her resilient groundedness angered him, but he wore her down until he had finally made her doubt her support system and herself, whether they were honest with her, whether she was loved.

And the once vibrant woman became a fragile shell of herself. After she had invited him in and trusted him with the keys to her soul, he stole everything that made her her–a heist of the cruelest kind.