He knows I can’t run to anyone else. He’s the only one who knows what’s clawing at my insides, the only one standing with me in the ruins of everything I’ve tried to hold together. I can’t do this alone anymore, and we both know it. None of the names I was raised to rely on, to lean into when the weight of the world got too heavy, are here. Not one of them can see me like this, stripped bare, standing on the edge of unraveling. Not a Van Doren, not a Caldwell, Hawthorne, or Pierson. The only name I have left is the one I was warned away from. The one I was never supposed to trust. Jude
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