Every Ugly Word

by Aimee L. Salter

I closed my eyes, imagining he was really there, remembering how he’d held my hand earlier that night. How he’d needed me.

People do what they want. They love who they love. No one else can change that.

To learn that I wasn’t who they thought I was.”

suppose I would define someone—or a decision they made—as brave when they choose a path that could have either serious gains or extreme consequences. When they’re choosing that path not out of recklessness, but out of hope. For something better.”

“People you love should always be more important than people who judge you.”

“Yes,” I said. And it was an answer to anything. Everything.

And for a second, when his lips closed on mine, I felt like I was watching it happen to someone else. But then . . . so softly, but so sure, I fell into his kiss.

“A coward, just like the rest of them. The kind of person who makes the easy choice rather than the right one. The kind who knows that what he’s doing is hurting someone but does it anyway.”

I stayed on the floor, wrapped around the pain, forcing the cracks inside to hold. Until I could breathe.

The world became a very small place. Just me and the painting.

“I believe that human beings have a tendency to live up to expectations: what we expect of ourselves, what we believe others expect of us. I believe we all fit our lives to those patterns. And I wonder if that hasn’t been part of your problem. You make choices based on how you perceive others expect you to behave. You—perhaps subconsciously—draw their attention to your flaws.”

All the pieces inside snapped apart and fell away, tinkling to the floor of my life and leaving a yawning hole where my heart should have been.

Deep down, I knew this day was the turning point. The moment I’d look back on and say, “That’s when my life changed.”

After all the years sharing my reflection, it was a strange feeling. But even though she was gone, I could still hear her. Hear her wisdom, and her laughter. Hear her telling me to remember . . .

was not unscathed. I had scars—inside and out—that would never leave me.

It opened my eyes. It changed my world.

She loved me enough to give everything. And if I walked around with my head down, and my heart strangled . . . how was that going to honor her—the person who had worked so hard to save me?

You just haven’t grown up enough yet to realize courage isn’t fearless.”

we won’t try to turn you into someone else. And we won’t denigrate your work. We believe in trial and error. And we believe in letting you tell us who you should be.”

I was afraid to let it go. Afraid to lose it. So it stayed with me, waiting out the night.

was afraid because, even after everything I’d overcome, I still had holes.

it isn’t what happens to you in your life that destroys you. It’s what you do about it.

I’d decided to keep fighting, keep searching for answers. Because as long as I did that, there would always be a chance my holes would heal. I could have hope. My gaps only became inevitable when I stopped believing they could be filled.

As long as I had hope, the good things would stay good.

So, no, I’d never be a kick-ass movie heroine. But I was real. And loveable. And for now, that was enough.