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For our true modern-day heroes, the men and women of the armed forces, “thank you for your service” will never be enough. EVER.
A love and place we made together, against all odds. Our darkness mingling and molding, pouring our foundation, and erecting the frame while we decorated the walls with the memories we made. Filling every shelf and lining every cabinet, creating our forever home within one another.
It’s only in the wake of it that you realize the easy decisions are the only choices you have any real say in. The hard stuff—the really hard stuff—that’s life happening to you.
Why am I not worth loving, Celine? Why do the men I trust and care for with all my heart holds treat me so terribly? It is not just the men in my life. It is the women, too. What is it about me that tells people it is okay to insult and hurt me?
In the home she built for him, for us. Years of her love’s labor make up every room. It’s our haven and refuge against the outside world,
“No,” I rasp out in both declaration and vow. “I’m going to be the one that breaks the cycle.”
“Because you both look and listen for them,” I counter, calling her out. It’s one of the traits I’ve learned is practiced by those who suffer from trauma. They are often the ones to analyze people closest to them, forever looking for and expecting bad things to happen.
Even so, I’m quickly finding all parts of me wanting all parts of her—especially the broken ones.
“Fighting for yourself will never be failing.”
“You think I don’t know that? My whole life has imploded in blinks the last few years, but this isn’t a blink type of thing. I want to give you all of them.”
“Why isn’t it my place? Why can’t it be? I’m the fucking man who’s been scraping you from every surface your pain leaves you lying on. Talking you down on your worst days, facing your fears with you before tucking you in at night. I don’t have a right to know?”
So, I’m not going to let you make me feel like shit for giving a fuck about the woman who has literally saved me from some of my darkest hours over the last two years. Who has strengthened me during the worst time of my life while suffering every day in her own fucking skin. I cared, I still care, so fucking much, and so I read them because I had to know.” He swallows. “Now that I do, I can’t for the fucking life of me understand how any man could look at you, get the best parts of you, look into your eyes, touch your beautiful body, and fucking hurt you like that.”
“I’m not your problem, Soldier.” “No, what you are, is my fucking reason,” I declare, pulling back slightly to command her eyes. “My reason to fight and my reason to come home. You are home. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Your soldier. Loyally and faithfully yours.”
“Get on the bed, spread your legs, leave your hands on your thighs, and don’t take your eyes off mine.”
It’s the best I’ve ever felt in my life watching the woman I love draw her power back from me.
I begin to shed the weight of their mistakes, brick by brick. A wall made up of the load I’ve been carrying for people who’ve never shown up to do the same for me, for too fucking long. Weight created by their selfishness and missteps. My every attempt to help them with their burdens thwarted or overlooked. So, as I shed their collective sins, their burdens, I materialize a wall between myself and their fucking decisions, becoming lighter with every step.
“We don’t get to know, Delphine. We just have to trust ourselves to know better, and that’s the scary part. But it’s been a long time, and I’ve forgiven the younger me for putting up with those hard years of abuse. The younger Layla just wanted to be loved.”
Sometimes, all it takes is one person to bring awareness to another in pain, to make them feel like they belong here on this earth and have their place.
“I loved you through space and time before, and I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I’m with you, I’m with you, always,” I croak in promise. As her last breath leaves her, I bend to whisper in her ear. “Forever,” I murmur, her weight sinking further into me as she departs.
