Luna and the Lie

by Mariana Zapata

“I’m only trying to be your friend.” “Does it look like I give a fuck about that right now?” I had gotten real good at getting crapped on by people. By being taken advantage of. But not from people who I thought I could trust. Who had made me believe that I could. Yet here I was. You can’t make anyone love you or care about you. I knew that better than anyone. The hairs on my arms stood up, my back prickled, and I just went… numb as I stood there, looking down at the man I had cared for, for years. The one who had started to make me feel that I wasn’t a nuisance, that it was okay to ask him for things. That had made me feel safe. Understood. And I realized the burn in me was actually a freezer burn. Leave me alone, Lucas Ripley had just said to me. I didn’t have much pride, but I had enough. Maybe Rip couldn’t put things together enough, but I had left the people who hadn’t wanted me around and never looked back. Enough was enough. I was over it—those words, getting shoved aside by all these people I cared about, being made to feel dispensable—that all of this felt like acid on my soul.

Sigh