The Way I Used to Be (The Way I Used to Be, #1)

by Amber Smith

I can’t finish because I don’t even fully understand it myself.

I lie. I am afraid. But in this other way, I’m also more afraid of being afraid. Afraid of not doing it too. Afraid that maybe I would be too afraid to ever do it.

The more I tried to get away, the more he had me.

I couldn’t believe how strong he was. How weak I was.

It’s something worse than silence...

“I don’t know,” I whisper. Because I don’t know—I don’t know anything right now.

But not here in the library. Here, I’m safe.

It all makes so much sense, there’s no room for mistakes or misunderstandings.

I’m more than scared. I’m so terrified I’m almost unable to breathe.

My body is a torture chamber. It’s a fucking crime scene. Hideous things have happened here, it’s nothing to talk about, nothing to comment on, not out loud. Not ever. I won’t hear it. I can’t.

But it feels too nice, too sweet, too meant for someone else, someone more like who I used to be, or rather, who I would have been.

I try to calm myself down, try to not be afraid.

And then I count all the ways he is not like him, the ways this is not like that, the ways I am not like her.

suddenly aware that he could take something from me that I hadn’t given. And apparently I hadn’t given something he wanted.

And I’m lost in it. I just need out. By any means. I was a fool to think I was ready for this.

sometimes, I don’t think I believe in God.” Because what kind of God lets bad things happen to people who so desperately try to be good?

I feel an entire ocean between us, and we’re standing on opposite shores, staring at each other from the farthest ends of the world.

Sometimes he uses his words like weapons to chip away at my icy exterior and sometimes he can break through to the slightly defrosted layer beneath. But then again, sometimes he just hits solid iceberg. For instance, he knows what he’s doing when next he says, “And you should smile more too.”

He has no way of knowing how sometimes it physically hurts to smile. How a smile can sometimes feel like the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

And I’m terrified he’ll see through the tough iceberg layer, and he’ll discover not a soft, sweet girl, but an ugly fucking disaster underneath.

This was the day I wish I could go back to—the day I need to undo to stop it all from happening.

Maybe if that day never happened, maybe I wouldn’t have become so smitten, so pathetically infatuated.

I’m scared. Really scared he’s about to leave me. And more scared because I don’t want him to.

Everything that’s been coming between us seems to dissolve, and for once I don’t feel like a complete liar. For once I feel calm, safe. Terrifyingly safe.

“You know, I don’t even recognize you anymore.” And then he’s gone.

I say nothing. I do nothing. I feel nothing.

And I kneel there on the other side of the door that might as well be the other side of the galaxy, feeling so empty, so dead inside.

I don’t know who I am right now. But I know who I’m not. And I like that.

And her big secret is really not such a huge deal anymore. It was all so long ago now, it practically never even happened.

And leaves everything feeling too still, too vacant. Empty, haunted—this house. Not by ghosts, but by us, by our own history, by the things that have happened here.

They’re trying—I give them credit for that. I just can’t anymore. It’s too hard.

I need to leave. Need to go somewhere. Anywhere.

I have this smile on my face, but it’s all wrong because there’s this look in my eyes—this dull, dead darkness. Like something is missing. I can’t say what. But that missing something is something important, something crucial, something taken. Something gone now. Maybe for good.

I flip to the ninth-grade section to visit the ghost of that girl I used to be.

crying because of the atrocity of it all, of regret and time and lies and not being able to do anything about any of it.

I can’t remember, damn it, where the lies ended and I began. It’s all blurred. Everything suddenly seems to have become so messy, so gray, so undefined and terrifying.

All I know is that things went terribly awry, this wasn’t the plan. The plan was to get better, to feel better, by any means. But I don’t feel better, I feel empty, empty and broke...

Slow thoughts that always start quietly, like whispers you’re not even sure you’re hearing. And then they get louder and louder until they become every sound in the...

Would anyone care? Would anyone even fucking notice? What if one day I just wasn’t here anymore? What if one day it all just ...

Nobody was noticing anything, though. She couldn’t even be bothered to finish a sentence.

It all makes me feel like I could cry. Because, in my heart, I know, I’m not who he thinks I am. Not even close.

I look up and wish on the entire universe of stars that I was anywhere—I close them tight—anywhere but here. But when I open them, I’m staring at the same sky, standing in the same town I’ve been stuck in forever, the same middle of nowhere, feeling the same as I did before. Only worse.

I shake my head no, but my mind isn’t sure anymore. Of anything. Or anyone.

I don’t even know what kind of person I am.

I’m trying but I can’t breathe, like I have bricks on my chest—“just so…,” and suddenly, “so… fucking…,” and I’m crying, “tired.”

I’m crying with my whole body and all I want to do is disappear.

I feel suffocated. Don’t want to be held. Don’t want to be touched. Not by anyone ever again in my entire life.

I crunch my teeth together to keep myself from screaming. Screaming in general, screaming at him to get his hands off me, screaming for help, screaming because I can’t make sense out of anything that is happening, has happened, will happen. Screaming because I still feel like I’m back there, always back there, in my heart I’m still that girl.

don’t be hurt by me, don’t leave angry and destroyed. Don’t you know I’m not worth it?

Not anything in particular. Just little things, like the way he would smile at me, or the sound of his voice, the way I could sometimes make him laugh, the way he could sometimes make me feel so good, so free, so myself.