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

by Amber Smith

I thought things were so complicated with him. But they were so easy compared to this, compared to everything else.

Anyone who has ever felt anything for me now hates me—after hours of dwelling on this, I’ve actually made myself physically ill.

I just sleep and sleep. And no one bothers me at all. All day and all night, it’s just me in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of consciousness.

He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.

If he only knew the things he was capable of not hearing from the next room.

I can’t keep it out any longer. Can’t hold it back.

this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening. This is not real. This is something else. This is not me. This is someone else.

He wasn’t even holding me down. Not physically. But he was holding me in some other way, a way that was somehow stronger than muscle and arms and legs.

But I’m not fine. She’s not fine. He’s doing it, hurting her, again and again and again and nobody even turns to look! I try to point, want to scream: Behind you, look, damn it, notice something for once…

He has it—my secret. The truth. I can’t ever take it back now. Can’t lie it away.

I look around. The Earth is still intact. I’m still alive. The floor didn’t open up and swallow me whole.

I don’t know what I thought would happen if I told, if I let that that one word exist, but I didn’t expect nothing to happen. Everything is just as it was. No giant meteors collided with the planet and completely wiped out the entire human race.

I feel like we could stay like this forever and it would still never be long enough.

“This isn’t who I was supposed to be. I used to be so nice. I used to be a nice, sweet, good person. And now I just—I just—I hate. I hate him. I hate him so much, Josh. I really do.”

“I hate him so much that sometimes, that”—gasp, gasp, gasp. “Sometimes I can’t feel anything else at all. Just hate”—gasp—“hate, that’s all, that’s everything. My whole life is just hate. And I can’t—I can’t get it out of me. No matter what I do, it’s always there, I just—I can’t—”

His hands, his arms, can hold the pieces in place temporarily, maybe even for a long time, but he can never truly put them back together. That’s not his job. He’s not the hero and he’s not the enemy and he’s not a god. He’s just a boy. And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.

“No, I just mean, I can’t keep thinking of myself as someone who needs rescuing.”

There’s a brief moment of silence for what we’ve lost. And in that moment, it ends. Finally. The past of us officially comes to an end.

I start to understand something too. That this isn’t all about me. This thing, it touches everyone.

five minutes is forever. Five minutes is the rest of your entire fucking stupid life.

All these maybes swimming around my head make me think that “maybe” could just be another word for hope.