Tell Me You Mean It

The day she mixed up the words ‘epitome’ and ‘epiphany’ out loud was the same day she mixed up the meanings of the word ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in her head, embarrassedly rummaging for a good enough excuse as to why when she did so for the former but not the latter. Reed had laughed, his smile transparently contagious, and politely corrected her as he kissed her palm and touched the inside of her thigh. He reminded her of a handsome, far away king who ruled over a castle built of water, and made himself out of rock. Perhaps she just created that image, for he ruled high above her head, over his subjects: her thoughts. Regardless, she was nothing but a papier-mâché guard who stood loyally at the gate, waiting every day for him to take note of what made her special. When he didn’t, she reduced herself back to paper pulp and pieces from lingering too long in the watery castle depths.

Her heart told her endless stories to replace the memories of Reed that left hatred pulsing under her gums and searing under her nail beds, stories of snowstorms and pleas to stop the feather-light touches tracing circles into her skin, wind chimes and begging for him to stay with her as she tried to rediscover herself, and church bells and his careless whispers that she was codependent and knew too little about herself to be any semblance of mature. It was hard sometimes for her to remember the bad things about Reed because every little detail she recalled was hindered by his own version of the same momentous memory, but every small story she kept hidden to herself in leather bound journals and small font in work books was her own secret held dear. He couldn’t take those from her.

Months later, after those minutes of terror and hours of heartbreak had shifted from short term memories to long term inside of her mind, she was a composite of happiness and coexistence with a boy who whispered pleasantries into her ear instead of halfhearted threats and friends who supported her through the dark. One night, she was alone and nostalgic, and so she pocketed her lighter she kept hidden in her right dresser drawer and the stack of bounded letters addressed by the first and last names of those she carried close to her heart. Her fingers twitched in the cold, and her breath crystallized in the air, but the numbness of physicality couldn’t overpower the rigidity of the purpose under her skin.

The walk to the edge of Lake Superior was desensitizing, but it wasn’t nearly as dull to her senses as what it had been a week after her weekend spent in Reed’s grasp. The air didn’t whip around her or carry condescending statements to her as he had done, and the water didn’t reach for her thighs and her chest as he had done. The world was quiet and forgiving. The bound stack of letters felt heavier.

She remembered addressing them, finishing off an L with a flick of her wrist at the end of one of the recipient’s names and sealing them with her tongue and tears. A calligraphy pen was used to carve such beauty into a tragic assortment of writings, and though they left trails of heartbreak and paper cuts behind them, they were aweing to catch a glimpse of. One by one, she threw them to the waves that caught them with mercy, dragging them to the depths of a bitter and compassionate end.

“Can you hear me?” The voice was fleeting, soft and silk-like, but oh so painful to reimagine where she thought she would be free at last. “Can you hear me?”

And suddenly she was back in a blue green car with leather seats and a man whose laugh was a lantern for the world’s darkness. His hands folded over hers; he traced patterns into her skin where blisters from life’s plentiful casualties had festered. She was laughing too, and her arm was slung casually out the window as the melody of a summer lullaby split the speakers. “I can hear you!” She had giggled, firm and unaware of the sin poised behind his eyes.

He spoke her name, and the memory faded with the breeze, leaving her kneeling in 2am darkness. Tears splashed against the last letter, the one with his name on it, staining the whiteness like he had done to her purity. Every last bit of her, even the bits he hadn’t grazed with his fingertips, was tainted. She was tainted.

“Relationships are about compromises, right?” He had said, slipping his boxers over his legs while she refused to meet his eyes despite how he said her name. Sweetly. Kindly. As though it had all been just a compromise. While he stood across the room, eyes soft and yet unapologetic, he peered at her as she frantically hurried to dry her tears and agree with him.

“You didn’t want to do anything and you made it this far.” His words echoed cruelly from above her, pausing her sobs that it hurt, it just hurts too much, please stop.

“There was no way we could work if you didn’t do what I want.” What a silly statement. What a silly girl she was for rationalizing it.

“What a shame.” He had clicked at her, tsked as though she was his disciple and he was the only religion she could hope to be saved by. Yet she had believed him to be her only God and so she continued her senseless, endless worship.

Why was it so hard to reminisce on the better halves of Reed? Part of her found herself to be so ungrateful for the good he had caused, but the more memories of him she drew out in her leather bound journals and in the margins of workbooks, the more she remembered them differently. It was as though he had cursed them to appear innocent, wonderful, and pure, and now that she was aware of the manipulation he was desperate to cast on her, the spell was lifted.

She fished for the lighter in her pocket and set the little flame ablaze, holding it to the corner of the letter written for him and watched as it singed the edges black. Tainted. Her fingers slipped from the red button, and the fire extinguished before her eyes. She couldn’t destroy it like she had done the rest of them. They were all addressed to people she loved and supported, people who would miss her if she was gone. They were the reason she no longer needed the carefully inked apologies of her would-be absence. Those letters were useless. But Reed… she wanted to be dead to him. She wanted him to forget her name and her number instead of staying by her side and resisting her futile attempts of making him step out of her life. She wanted to give him a reason to mourn her, and to mourn his own actions.

Carefully tucking the lighter away and after a cautious sip at her thermos, she cradled the first suicide letter she had ever finished writing to her chest, remembering again his sinful touch as she begged him to stop and pleaded for his mercy. “You’re so beautiful,” he had said, unravelling the strength she had instilled in her thoughts.

For a moment, her insecurities had leapt at the chance to be redefined by such a sharp, confident individual who spoke of the stars as though he had woven them into the sky. Instead of crying out for him to stop and instead of thinking of him as the monster that was hidden so many years under her bed, she had begged, “Tell me you mean it.”