Words, Words, Words...

Words are fucking hard sometimes.

I broke him. I feel like... maybe, maybe, maybe there was something I could have done to stop this from happening. Ages and ages and eras and eras back. Responsible. I was cold and cruel and mean and I couldn't have just given him a little more. Just a little more maybe. Maybe then he'd be okay. Well and alive and okay.

I can dream. Dreams are silly though.

There's this ache... it comes up between the moments where Lissie is holding me together and Shaun plays some comfort song to keep me from hiding myself entirely. It's guilt. I know the thing for what it is. And it is guilt. It's nauseating. It never goes away. And I think I deserve it.

Between the moments where Lis has her hand on mine to remind me that I am not alone and I am no longer bound and the moments where Shaun gives his sage-words of true comfort and sympathy... I retreat. Back to that moment. Could I have changed it? If I had been less petrified and thrown and betrayed and hurt... if I could've gotten a handle on my emotions, could all this damn ache have been avoided? I'm normally better than that. I keep my composure. I hate weapons.

Seems terribly selfish. My primary motiive. Make my own aching stop. I've never been to great at giving. Or getting. Where does that even put me on the social scale of givers and getters? Puts me in the 'I don't like people, not really at all, leave me alone because it's just easier that way' category. Where does that even fit into the spectrum? It doesn't. It's an outlier.

Ah yes. There I am. An outlier. A product of my own making. A societal freak of nature. Unwilling to receive or give trust.

I am fighting my own nature. Moment by moment I am fighting it. I want to go back, years and years back when it was so, so, so, so terribly much easier. Back, way back... to right about 8 years old. When I could trust and it was easy. When mom would tell me "Dad will be home in 136 more days," and I believed her. I believed her because she was my mother and I trusted her and trust was easy and not impossible. I believed her when she told me her Tiana was the sweetest, most beautiful, kind and caring little girl she had ever met. I believed her because she was my mother and these things were still true.

I was kind.
I was sweet.
I was caring.
Beauty was inside and out.

I have learned bad habits as I've grown up. I've grown out of childhood niavety, but I wish I hadn't. I wish I was still beautifully unmarred by the coldness of the world and the reality of the situation and the cynicism. So much cynicism. I wish that I could be childlike in my worldview, but adult enough to know the value of that worldview. Unfortunately I am only the latter. I drift in and out. Between hoping and wishing there's still that ache. And I know the world is not the place my childlike perception would have had it.

I am not 8 years old and I am not blessed with a kind, caring, trusting heart. And I am here. He's not. Won't be. Ever.

I'd never killed anyone before. And I trusted him. Myself. Us. So well.

My nature says retreat further Tia. Reatreat and shut them all off. Just keep them out. It will be safer for them. Safer for you. Because you don't like people and what could they possibly like about you? People are changeable, malleable, untrustworthy things Tia: reject them all.

I can't do that though. That's not fair. Not to Lissie nor Shaun nor the comforts they provide me. They're not people I tell my nature. I don't have to like or trust people, but these two are not people. They are worthy of my trust. They are not people, my cruel nature, they are my friends. I won't retreat. Not from them. They deserve better, so I will give them better.