light through half-drawn orange curtains

Here's the thing, when you come up in a conversation, I can still laugh and take the jokes and make them. And I can say that it wasn't that bad, that you weren't that bad, and mean it. Because most of me doesn't believe you're like that.

There's a lot of things I associate with you, with your name- both good and bad, and neither more overwhelming than the other.

And my friends, my best friends in the whole wide world, they say what they do and I don't blame them for it. And I laugh and say, "it wasn't so bad." And they go, "Really now."

When I'm thinking about it like that, it doesn't feel like it was. It's like a broken circuit. I don't know how else to put it. All the things I think about in relation to you, they'll add up and I'll say, "You live and learn." Or, just like the line one of us said just now, "I've been through the worst."

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you can come up, you do sometimes. It never feels like a big deal.

Then some nights, I'm a mess. I need to find corners and I can't. The light's too bright. I need to hide, I need to hide.

And I'm crying and crying and I hate that I am. I can't see past this blur, and everything that skims across my skin makes me want to scream and I want it to stop. I want it to stop. I want it to stop.

The blanket's too close to me, but then I'm too cold. I don't know what to do anymore.

I just want it to stop, all of it.

And I think-

this is what you left me with.

Here's the thing,

when you come up in a conversation...