Losing Control

There are gossamer cracks on my brain that drag me back to when I was fifteen, engrossed with someone else's boyfriend. He was like a big brother at first then was a monster that only wanted me when he was lonely. It wasn't abuse to me then, hell, it was never called abuse but I know a part of me is now broken. I hate going into detail, but he was someone I trusted with parts of me that no one else was able to know, and I paid a price for it that I'm still calculating.

I feel the cracks when I meet someone new and they get close and the wall automatically forms, creating a labyrinth around the delicate parts that have been cracked. No one is allowed in, yet I feel someone closing in on the final leg of the maze. No monster I send to scare them off will work, and I feel the steps vibrating along those cracks, threatening to affect them, make them bigger. I no longer cry because it hurts, I now cry because I feel someone coming and I can't tell if it's with a bandage or a pickax and no part of me wants to find out.

Tears slide down my face because I don't know who to trust because even these walls are starting to turn against me, protesting always keeping people out and always wanting to stay safe. Safety robbed us of a rebellious teenage phase and intensified drunken college nights. Every month of friendship with a boy seems like I am inching closer and closer to the cliff. Every flirt or casual suggestion of a date sends makes my mind numb and my heart calcify. It's been five whole years now, and I can't shake it. I can't stop thinking that every man will be the same as him, and I don't know that I ever will.