Dear Ana

by I.I.E.

Someone finally chose me.

The pain isn’t the only thing holding me back. I just can’t imagine finding someone that I would even want to start a family with. I don’t know a lot of things, Ana, but I do know that I am not a person people can fall in love with.

“I wanted to get you flowers, as they’re a first date rite of passage, but I didn’t want to get you real ones because I knew they would eventually die.” I looked up at him and he was staring at me intensely. “I don’t want what we have to ever die, Maya.”

me. “Just because you’re easily pleased, doesn’t mean you deserve anything less than everything.”

“You said the only way you would ever go on a run with me was if I was doing the running with you on my back.”

“I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but it doesn’t feel that way. This thing between us is so strong, I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

You told me once that to fear something meant to obsess over it. To memorize it. To learn everything and anything there is to know about it, but I disagree. I think that’s what it means to love something because that’s how I feel about you. If anything, Maya, the only thing I fear about you is that you’ll never love me back. But even that isn’t enough to diminish my feelings. Whether or not I can have your heart, I’ll continue to love you more than I did yesterday, and I know I’ll love you more tomorrow than I did today.

“I was constantly floating around, rarely connecting with people and just silently observing others live their lives to the fullest from the sidelines.

You were the first person who ever fought for me. Who noticed my absence. Who felt it when I was suffering. You saw through my façade and despite the broken mess you found hiding, you still wanted to know me. The real me.

“You are my miracle, Noah Davidson. My heart used to form a new crack every day I woke up and realized that I was still alive–

“And I, my love, am completely and undeniably yours,” he vowed against my lips.

My bones were breaking.

Whoever said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a fucking liar, Ana. What doesn’t kill you does not make you stronger. It just makes you wish that it did kill you.

Grief was a strange emotion. Especially this grief. The grief you felt for someone you’d never met. The grief you felt for someone that gave you everything when you gave them nothing.

The grief you felt when you loved someone that could never love you back. The grief you felt when you lost someone that was never yours to lose. And if that wasn’t bad enough, that grief always branched off into a million other emotions. Guilt, because I survived and she didn’t.

“Death hits survivors the hardest, but I can already tell you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. I look forward to knowing you, Maya. If you’ll let me.”

I never really wanted anything. Just peace and quiet. All I really dreamed about was being alone,”

The only thing I had was my hope, Ana. My faith that things couldn’t be bad forever, because I knew that with every rainstorm there came a rainbow. So despite all the attacks against my frail and thin shield, I continued to grasp onto the scraps and tatters that were left behind.

I continued to gather the crumbs and specs that survived through all the destruction and desperately tried to fuse them back together only for them to get destroyed all over again. But I’m done. I have no more slivers of hope. I have no more fragments of trust left in the universe. The only thing I have is the darkness that’s been flickering in the edges of my vision, patiently waiting for me to let it take over.

“No. Eventually, they get tired of swimming back up for air, so they drown themselves,”

“I don’t know how to swim, Noah. I don’t know how to swim, and I’m tired of trying to struggle back up for air. I’m so fucking tired.”

How are you supposed to heal in the same place you got hurt? How are you supposed to recover from all the pain and torments of your past, when your past is still your present?”

You are the sunshine that my roots need in order to grow. You are the water that my core needs in order to survive,

“You made me feel a certain way, so I would force myself not to sleep in fear that I’d wake up and it would all be a dream. That you would be a dream. I still fear that, Noah.”

“You reignited everything that makes me real, Maya. As long as I have you, I can never cease to exist.”

You are defined by the things you made happen despite them.”

“The one that makes you who you are.”

The cage is open, I wanted to scream at myself. Run, flee, leave, get out, get out, GET OUT!

“You and I are one in the same. We are exactly the same.”

One of them lives to hurt people, while the other lives to be a symbol of love.”

“One day you’re going to love every single part that makes you, you. But until then, I’ll happily love you enough for the both of us. I’ll love you enough to fill a billion hearts.” He kissed me gently. “The parts you hate will always receive an infinite amount of love from me, Maya.”

All I wanted was a drop of love, but he gave me an entire rainstorm. All I wanted was a single star to wish on, but he offered me the entire fucking galaxy and then helped me make each of them come true.

The one thing I needed, but will never have. He gave you a brother, Ana.

Suffering is hard, but healing is much harder.

You don’t realize when you’re living in it, but suffering is an addiction. The human body can only live in fight or flight mode for so long before that becomes your default mode.

Our bodies are designed to keep us alive throughout any and all circumstances, so if you’re trapped in a toxic environment, event...

All the organs and systems that work hard to make us function every day get so attuned to the chaos, that they’ll ultimately start to use that pain as sustenance and ammunition to survive. So what happens when it all disappears? What happens when you take away your body’s main source of fuel and energy? The ...

There was one thing that I knew for sure was real, and it was the only thing keeping me together. It wasn’t anything big or extravagant––strong arms wrapping around me tightly, and enveloping me in a blanket of warmth and safety . . . soft lips brushing against my shoulder or my collarbone

it. I used to think fight or flight were my only two options, but there was a third F people failed to mention. You could choose to fight, and you could choose to flee, but you could also choose to feel.

It may have been the final wave of the tsunami, but the ocean never stops crashing against the shore. The sand just has to learn how to live with it.

Sometimes things just happen without a heartfelt and meaningful lesson in the end to tie it all together. They can’t be fixed or redeemed. They are terrible and heartbreaking and unfortunately, they are also life. I was so convinced that I needed closure to move on, but you don’t get closure from the people who hurt you. You get closure from yourself when you finally realize and accept that you never deserved any of it.

“You are my heart,”

“If you told me ten months ago that a real-life man would replace a fictional character for first place in my heart, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

“Maybe you can start with planting strawberries,” he suggests after a moment. “It’s my favorite kind of jam.”

“Nothing but reading, and making my own jam.” “Is this how you always imagined your happy place, Maya?” he whispers.

People think healing comes naturally. A papercut that closes up on its own after a few days––red, to white, to skin––without any effort from you. Emotions don’t work like that. A wounded mind can’t heal itself. It’s a choice.

You had to choose to heal. You had to choose to be better. You had to choose to be happy, and that choice, as difficult as it was, is my happily ever after that opened the doors to an infinite number of happily ever afters waiting to come.

“Okay, settle down,” I tease, blushing. “For you?” he vows. “For you, I’ll do anything.” “Promise?” “Pinky promise, Maya.”

I can hear Noah somewhere, his voice a million miles away, in another dimension.

“Just give me one more minute. Just let me look into your eyes for one more minute. Just come back to life for one more minute.”