She catches my slip up, calling Gare Centrale « Grand Central » shows where my head is at. We're exhausted, artists working with busy lives and schedules usually too packed to overlap, but we're here. At this hour, it’s the only place that’s open. A moderately sketchy McDonald’s is where we discuss our spoils as allies. It’s crazy what one horrible battle that lasted way too long can do to you, the way some men have a way of haunting and reappearing in ways you never thought imaginable. We’ve become calculating, concerned over next moves and overthinking while twiddling empty sugar packets. As much as we want the future to be better, this self-sabotage holds us back as if we don’t deserve the present. 

Who told us we don’t deserve to be happy? Who told us we weren’t worth it to go to war for? Who told us, who made us believe that no one would partner us to create guilds, not even ourselves? 

When the love you cultivate for yourself is less than the love you have for someone who reminds you that you are replaceable, you begin to believe it. As smart as you are and as brave as you are, it wasn’t worth anything. Is numbness strength or weakness? When you are considered lucky to be in your position, told that you are a piece that just happened to fit, the sting reminds you that fitting and belonging are two different things. Walking on eggshells waiting for a pink slip or a black eye, that is not love. It doesn’t matter how many times people who love you tell you you are perfect when the person you love makes the effort to find fault in everything you do.

Love and relationships are not supposed to be a war. We shouldn’t have to fight to be happy; once we get it, we don’t want to let it go. Is it really clinginess when you’ve never experienced the waves of pleasure? When you’ve been denied the respect and the purpose of those bundled nerves he made it seem like were there for nothing? Is it really being desperate if this is the first time I’ve been happy? 

The relationships we have growing up shape us. The abusive ones mark us especially, and it’s more often that we don’t notice these bruises until we bump into something else and feel pain. We are apprehensive to being treated nicely; simple things like washing a pile of dishes are rare and reduce us to silence. The little things mean a lot when you’ve been made to feel like you’re nothing more than a little thing.