I told myself I would be free when that day finally had come and gone.

That it would all be over.

That she no longer could affect me because I was walking away for good.

That day, I stood before her with the rest of them, waiting my turn.

I never expected her to say anything other than what she ended up saying.

What she has always said.

I didn’t expect disappointment to come at all, let alone have it come days later.

  What I didn’t realize at the time, and in that moment, is I let myself feel a kind of hope I had promised I would never evet let back in.

 A hope partly connected to her.

One that has always felt foolish because it has only ever hurt me.

Yet I still let it happen without seeing until after I had done so.

This time, even after years of her destruction, what I had unknowingly hoped and maybe even prayed for was that she would actually hear me.

That she would take my words and me seriously.

 I don’t remember if there ever a moment when she truly had, let alone tried to. 

It was in no way realistic nor smart, but still, I had let that hope creep in somehow. 

I wondered when was the last time it was that she had looked at me and actually saw me?

Had she ever?

I have no idea anymore.

That day I saw her eyes were now completely empty and cold. Blank.

They held a darkness inside of her that she let grow over the years.

An erie darkness that at times gives me chills.

One that still sometimes scares me to this day and has for most of my life.

I have always felt like a coward when it comes to her.

 Looking at her I realized the person I knew her as all those years ago was, in reality, a mask that she had worn and hid behind.

Now even that mask is gone.

I see now a stranger is before me.

I always could see how damaged, miserable, tortured and in pain she is.

But I do not know her and wonder if I really ever did.

I feel I only know a version of her that is long gone.

She chose her hell a long time ago, and now it’s the only place she feels comfortable being despite losing so much.

I think after this long it’s all she knows.

It doesn’t scare her.

However, what does scare her is change and I think it always has.

I don’t believe she will ever choose it instead of her own misery.

Her misery is hers and what she has built around her. It has made her even more cruel and angry.

Along with her drugs and alcohol, it is what matters to her most now.