Dash

by Shantel Tessier

I look down at the table and give a little smile to myself. Rodger had truly taken a strong-willed woman and turned her into a fragile piece of glass that he wanted to periodically break. See, to him, he was the only one able to glue me back together. That gave him power. I gave him the power. But now, now I’m stronger than I ever was before.

“I mean the one where I act all submissive. The one where you guys demand that I be yours. And only yours. The one where I do things that make me hate myself to make you happy. And let’s face it; that’s not fucking possible!” I ramble as my arms wave around in the air.

As far as I can tell, she’s not a weak person. So, in order for him to have made her that way, he had to have cut her down. Made her feel like she needed him to survive.

I swallow hard, knowing that promises are made to be broken. In the end, ‘promise’ is just a word spoken to prevent the inevitable that no one wants to see coming. I promise I love you. I promise you’re my everything. I promise not to hurt you. Do you see a pattern? Promise makes you think that you have a chance. A candy-coated word to sweeten the pot.

“I fell in love with him because of the way he made me feel. Not my feelings toward him, but my feelings toward myself. I lit up when he walked into a room. I had a smile on my face that wouldn’t go away. My skin would tingle whenever he would look at me.” Her eyes drop to the cut on my lip, and I lick it nervously. Her eyes meet mine once again, and she continues. “I loved myself first. I fell in love with the person who I was when he was around. And in loving myself, I fell in love with him.”

“Give love a chance. It doesn’t matter if your heart breaks a hundred times. You’ll eventually open your heart to that one person who makes all that pain go away. It’ll be that one love that’s worth it.”

Dash taught me that you’re never guaranteed tomorrow. And yesterday is never enough.