Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

When women say they’ve been to prison, people think trash, whore, addict, thief. But when men say they’ve been to prison, people add badges of honor to the negative thoughts, like trash, but badass, addict, but tough, thief, but impressive.

There’s still a stigma with the men, but the women never get out with stigmas and badges of honor.

He assumes I’m a grown-ass woman, but I barely feel like an adult. I’m a twenty-six-year-old teenager, inexperienced, starting from scratch.

I have a daughter I have never held.

She has a scent I have never smelled. She has a name I have never yelled. She has a mother who has already failed.

Some things can be forgiven, but sometimes an action is so painful the memory of it can still crush a person ten years down the road.

And now we never will, because life is a cruel, cruel thing, the way it picks and chooses who to bully. We’re given these shitty circumstances and told by society that we, too, can live the American dream. But what they don’t tell us is that dreams almost never come true.

Reality is depressing as fuck. So is this job.

In the end, if there’s nothing good going on in your life, almost every song becomes depressing, no matter what it’s about.

It proves that time, distance, and devastation allow people enough opportunity to craft villains out of people they don’t even know.

Music still makes me think of Scotty, but thinking of Scotty no longer makes me sad. Now that I’ve forgiven myself, the reminders of him only make me smile.