When Do We Know?

How do we walk through life and figure out who is safe to be around? We can trust someone with our life and then be killed at their hand. We can fall in love, only to find out the other person never loved us but only found us useful. How long can one remain useful? I guess I am 3-years' worth of usefulness, and I'm alive. So that's good news I suppose. I don't know how much longer that 3-years could have gone had I not left him when I did. I believe he would have eventually left me. He knew I had nothing left to tear from my flesh and spill from my veins, I could no longer feed him. I wasn't even feeding myself most days.

I can wonder if it is because nobody knew me before Sacramento. I can wonder if it's because I do a really good job of coming off like a bitch. I can wonder about many things. Or I can allow myself to understand that it took a stranger meeting me, becoming my friend, and knowing within a very short period of time that I was more than the woman he saw sitting across from him. I was sinking. I'd wasted away in front of those that claimed to be my family now. I had been on my own while surrounded by the friends that carried his last name. They would have watched me die and then given him a ride to my funeral or paid for an Uber so he could make his loud, presence known; take my death and form it into his own tragedy. Then it would have become their tragedy to laugh about over a competitive game night around the table.

That stranger, my friend; saved me. I don't know why I never left. I've been trying and trying to understand my own mind. I don't know if I ever will. Up until that night at the Silent Disco I had only been existing through Portland and Sacramento, but then I met someone.

And although it has been so fucking hard some nights, I am keeping my promise to my friend. I am keeping the promise I made to myself. I will live.

I want to live. I want to experience everything that I can. I don't want to be afraid. I choose kindness, the ever-heavy experience of growth and healing, and to believe that there are good people mixed in with all of that trash.

I have a piano lesson tomorrow. I’m excited and nervous.