Cause This is a Battle

She felt like she had been going through battle after battle, with herself and the ones who loved her. She couldn't figure out where she went of course. But she lost.. she lost her confidence, her will, her dreams, her passion. She no longer had the words anymore. How did it get this far?

...Because she let him in, trusting that he would take care of her and help her not forget, but move forward from everything. But what they both forgot was her and they were heading for a wrong turn, one that maybe they could never change. She needed herself back and for the first time she wasn't sure if that was even possible anymore...

You Gave Me Roses and I Left Them There To Die

Several months back I received a dozen coral roses from an anonymous man. The note read " you thought I'd forget gorgeous". My first thought was 'does this date have a significance?' but I knew it didn't. I asked a few different people if they had sent them to me and I kept getting "nope not me" until the last one, I was nervous and intimidated to ask but I also knew he could have been a possibility. He confirmed they were from him, asked if I liked them and told me what the note meant. In the few times spent together we had walked by a flower stand and I had mentioned that coral roses were my favorite and thats what the note meant, that he listened and remembered. I never told anyone they were from him because honestly no one would have believed me, they would have laughed and mocked me. I didn't want anyone to know he sent me those roses because in the end he wasn't who I wanted.. I wanted the guy I was chasing all summer long, fame or no fame the boy who sent the flowers wasn't the one. I left the flowers in my room to die and continued to try and win over the summer crush. If he knew that there had been another person in the picture he wouldn't have stuck around and for so long thats what I worked towards. I wasn't about to lose him to anyone, no matter their social status. So I kept the sender a secret and left that little bit of my life in the rearview. But his compliments and his genuine liking towards me come back every so often....

" I love her"

' I thought you should know this, I've been seeing someone for about a month now'
' I love her, Im not sure about the whole in love thing, but I care about her...deeply'


Did he just say what I thought he just said? No there's no way I just read that correctly...let me read that again... 'I love her'. This cannot be right, this is not happening right now.

I always had the one up on one thing, he never had a girlfriend or felt for another girl like he did me. I may have been in complete denial when I told myself he will never ever have a girlfriend again. He wasn't the type to care about being lonely, he had a way to have girls fill the void but never let it get past his typical using. I needed my void to be filled and I for one was never lonely, he was actually used to me finding other guys to replace him so when he would find out I had a boyfriend he somewhat laughed it off. " oh that will end in a few months, she'll get bored and come right back to me again"

To my dismay, the book filled with seven years of our on again off again romance was at a close. I have felt heart break before with him, but nothing quite like this. He wasn't ever supposed to move on, he was never supposed to call a girl his girlfriend. I didn't care how selfish or naive that was, he was supposed to stay right where he was before. This was unlike any other feeling I had before, my body started to become numb, my fingers and arms they started to cramp up, I couldn't feel my body, I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't get one word out to even convince myself that I wasn't dying right then and there. Two years ago wasn't our breakup...it was happening right now. The minute I could even get my body to function and respond I come out with... " Im engaged." {am I neurotic? I am 21 years old Im not engaged, I've barely graduated college.. he is never going to believe this} 'Wow thats great Danielle, I mean Im in shock, I hope its what you want and it doesn't take away from your dreams, but you always wanted to get married so I guess you are happy'...{he seriously bought that?} Im not sure what felt worse, the fact that all I could come back with was a fake engagement announcement or the fact that my life of almost 10 years is at a complete stop. It was more than just a second break up with a boy I have known my entire life, it was a breakup from my safety, from the one thing I knew certain of when I knew of nothing else. I wish I had a heads up, some sort of signal... but I was completely taken off guard and left with a bottle of jack daniels and tissues.

So I was left again, to fend for myself and process this information I was given alone because no one else understands how I can even care about this. But what they don't know is him. He swore he would never love again or care about a girl and trust me he meant it. This was it though, the ending I never wanted to see. I knew that the break up two years ago wasn't the last of it, but even that didn't prepare me for the last and final words we would ever speak. No one could say or do anything to prepare me for this. The only one who could say or do anything to not make me feel like I just lost pretty much all of me was him, and he was out there loving someone else now.

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Fear Of Writing

It has been months and months since she last wrote. People would ask her what happened, why has she "given up". For the first time in her life, she stopped having the right words for everything, she stopped having the intense emotions like she used to. Consumed with negative thoughts and defeat she lied awake in bed night after night wondering if she had been lying to herself her entire life. Was her purpose in life something else? Could she possibly not be a writer? She began to believe this because her biggest fan, the one person who read every piece of her writing, who knew all of her dreams was now becoming her second biggest critic. He became selfish in her writing, if it wasn't about him and it was about something else, some other man then in his eyes and many other people's eyes it meant she didn't love him or she had not let go of her past. Trying to find the words to explain why that was never the case became exhausting and overwhelming. So the only solution that came to mind, something that would be simple quick and easy was to just stop all together and blame it on a writers block... but that wasn't the circumstance.

She developed a fear of writing. She was afraid that everything else in her life would have to take a back seat if she continued to write. Her boyfriend would think she didn't love him like she said, that her school work and work would suffer, that her friends would think she was selling them out about their personal lives, that she would ultimately take away any personal life she or anyone in her life had.

"If I write about this or that, then people will take it the wrong way and I am so afraid of criticism from those I care about the most.. I need them more than I need my writing"

She was slowly losing herself, the self that no one knew about except her. Writing was all she had and for a long time all she needed to get by, to face another day. That was being taken away and she didn't have the strength to hold on. One day she woke up and she decided to let those people get upset, let them try to read between the lines, they will probably fail at it anyway. No one is going to get hurt in her writing because for the most part those things had already happened and she is still there to write about it and the others are there to read it. She did not give up on writing and she would like to thank those who kept asking the questions of what happened. Fear of writing happened but that is just a part of her journey, she was her own biggest critic after all.