Fuck it all.
Fuck me. Fuck her. Fuck this.
Fuck it.
The body was a miraculous thing.
You could tear it apart, rip it to shreds, and somehow, it healed. Collagen formed scar tissue that sealed the gashes. Bones could be reset, and cartilage could regrow. Pain subsided until you didn’t feel the deep ache every time you breathed. Even the brain could heal, blocking out the horrifying details that woke you up at night, covered in sweat and crying. It, too, could be soothed and coaxed into healing through time and intense therapy.
But the heart? That organ never fully healed itself. It could never be right once it had been damaged. But no matter how broken it was, no matter how badly it hurt every time a memory slipped through the cracks and gripped you, it just kept on beating. You kept on moving, kept on living. Even when you wanted to curl into the fetal position and die, it wouldn’t let you. Those jagged fragments pulled themselves together and continued to pump blood through your body.
Every heartbeat killed you, but you were alive. Even if you didn’t want to be.
I placed the jar of vibrant stars back on my windowsill and smiled. It was a big deal for me. To smile again. To find a reason to want to smile again. It had taken months to get here. To find just a tiny bit of peace from the hell that was my life. Not anymore. I wouldn’t live like that. I wouldn’t let him take that away from me.
I didn’t do it alone, although sometimes it felt like I had been banished to the tiny island of Me. I became a recluse. I didn’t talk. I didn’t eat. Hell, sometimes it felt like I didn’t breathe. I existed.
For weeks, I stared at the stars on my windowsill, silently cursing them, hating them, but still needing them. Each one served as an individual reminder. They reminded me why I still breathed. Why I still kept moving forward no matter how badly I wanted to give up. They reminded me of the love I had, the love I shattered, and the love that kept me tethered to this life.
One day I wouldn’t need those stars. I wouldn’t need the crutch of my fears to keep me from leading a full, healthy life. I’d be able to kiss them goodbye and never look back. And I’d finally be free.
The pieces of my life were finally coming back together. My father was charged and convicted of attempted rape, attempted murder, and trespassing. That, along with the slew of warrants out for his arrest, resulted in him being sent to prison for no less than 20 years without the chance of parole. That gave me a small slice of peace, but it didn’t make me happy. Who could really be happy about having to relive your own personal hell in front of a room full of strangers? Yeah. That earned #254.
Sometimes it took tragedy to make you see the things that were staring you right in the face and breathing down your neck. I knew I had problems, but I kept them tucked away, smothered with denial. After many nights spent on my bedroom floor, shaking, rocking, and crumbling right before their eyes, Dom and Angel finally persuaded me to get help. I went back to seeing Dr. Cole and, as much as I hated to admit it, the know-it-all bitch was right. My fears had become irrational. I was collecting them like coins or stamps. Like tiny paper stars. Like shot glasses from all over the world.
My body and mind weren’t the only things that were on the mend. My mother had made the trip from The Philippines to help with my care after I was released from the hospital. We talked. We screamed. We cried. And I finally told her everything that had been festering inside me like a disease.
My mother had lived through the unthinkable. She had been beaten and tormented beyond anything I could ever imagine. He took everything from her, leaving nothing but the hollow carcass of a woman. And, being birthed into a traditional Asian family that didn’t believe in counseling or exposing dark family secrets, my mother never got the help she needed. Therapy was taboo. Talking about your problems with loved ones, let alone a stranger, just wasn’t the norm for them.
My mom never got a chance to heal. She didn’t have a Dom or an Angel. She didn’t even have a Blaine. But she had me. And together, we would fix what had been broken between us. It would take time, and probably enough tears to fill the Grand Canyon, but we would get through it. She was my mother. She was me. Repairing our relationship was helping me come to grips with what had happened to me. What happened to us.
I looked over at the guitar sitting on its stand in the corner of my room. I hadn’t touched it since…since before the attack. Since Blaine. When I let him go, I let go of music. I said goodbye to the one thing that made me feel whole. That made me fearless.
Music made me remember, and I needed to forget. It was damn hard. Shit, it was impossible. But it was getting easier to breathe everyday. I could think about him without breaking into a million pieces, sobbing so hard that my chest ached. I’d even been able to say his name aloud. And when Angel would update me on AngelDust’s weekend shows at Dive, she didn’t have to omit him from the story. Shit, he wasn’t Voldemort. Still, I insisted they keep all Blaine-related news to a minimum.