Sugar

by Mia Ballard

My transformation wasn't for love; it was a sacrifice on the altar of compromise, a slow, insidious erasure of my identity. The realization of his infidelity is a perverse liberation, a permission slip signed in betrayal that frees me from the self-imposed shackles. I no longer feel the need to dim my own light to match his dull glow.

There's this thing about descent—it's quiet, almost imperceptible, like the slow fade of sunlight at dusk, until you're standing in the dark wondering where the day went.

Ironic, how the very things that once drew me to him had become the markers of our mutual decline. That fucker.

Inside, I am the master of detachment, happy and feeling nothing, a serene tempest of apathy and desire. And somehow, in this chaotic symmetry, I find a twisted kind of happiness in my emptiness, a place where feeling nothing feels like everything.

I had managed to disappoint a man to the point where he questioned the very foundations of his feelings. If nothing else, that should be my superpower.

Disappointment slithered through my veins, cold and spiteful. He didn’t remember me. I truly meant nothing to him. The weight of that realization settled over me like an unwanted cloak, oppressive and suffocating.

It turns out that once you step into darkness, it's impossible to find the exit.

But the funny part is that when you go looking for trouble, it has the gall to play hide-and-seek.