Where We Went Wrong

by Kelsey Kingsley

All I hoped was that he was here to give his son a message and not to take him away.

I would wonder how they got themselves into that situation, and how they could function in the real world while being a slave to a substance.

I was never perfect, but she was. And I ruined her.

“I love you, man. I fuckin' love you and I ... I wish that was enough. I just ... I wish that was enough.”

None of us ever really know how long someone we love will be in our lives, but we can hope that no matter how long we have, we love them enough.”

addiction doesn't have one face,

We were fire and gasoline, and together, we could set our world ablaze.

“People who choose to be sad will never find the power to choose happiness,”

coping mechanism or not, drugs are never okay.”

Troubled, sure, but I've never known troubled to mean bad.”

My brain struggled to understand how a life so full and loved could be amounted to just a few boxes and bags full of stuff to be tossed and donated.

That maybe what makes a life full isn’t the stuff we fill it with, but the love and memories we accumulate throughout the years.

Life is hard. We gotta work at the things that are worth having 'cause otherwise, we'd never appreciate them.”

Damaged does not equate unworthy. I was hurt and rough around the edges. But I also wasn't doomed to be a prisoner of the past if I didn't want to be, and I was so tired of being locked up.

spent the minutes of the song wondering where we went wrong. We had been so good together, hadn’t we? He, the broken bad boy, and I, the innocent girl destined to put him back together. But tropes are meant for predictable movies and cheesy romance novels. They didn’t fit into the real world, with real people and real problems. And no matter how deep I delved into it, I couldn’t pinpoint any one pivotal moment that had ruined everything, and I wondered if maybe it had simply always been.

It occurred to me then that love isn't just the simple act of being with someone, it’s also carrying the weight of their truth and making it your own. Just to lighten the load and make their life that much easier.

Grief and guilt are heavy feelings to carry all the time, and my shoulders had been permanently slouched with the weight, or so I thought.