-1Please Hold My Hand

She despised this. It was weak and she had tricked herself into believing she would never be so easily manipulated by others behaviour.

It had been 7 years of convincing herself that psychology was wrong - was just empirically impossible as a science. She had simply been in denial. She had been affected.

It. He. Had affected her even though she fought so hard to carry nothing of him. But even that was a joke from the start. She was him.

She had his face, his colouring - his eyes. Did that mean she had his soul? His nature?

She knew she had his temper - but she prayed to keep it at bay. She prayed to be more internal. She wanted her pain, her anger, her fear and regrets to be her own. Not his, not her friends and not her lovers.

And that’s easy to do. You just don’t let people in. You keep them just far enough away that they don’t ask and don’t expect. They silently understand or are too unnerved to want to know.

It’s a fine balance but it’s how she’d lived, all adult connections had been forged this way. Everyone she’d come into contact with since she was 12 years old. Family were an exception in the sense they knew most of it (not all, never all) but it was never talked of.

He was mentioned only rarely and only ever referred to as the objective pronoun.

She was the youngest, the only child and the one that was overlooked. She refused to become another statistic and got on with life. She didn’t get into trouble or partake in any cries for help but that didn’t mean she wasn’t making one.

But they never saw. They probably never world. Her family was small, in each others pockets but they, like she but for different and varying reasons, were the most emotionally retarded individuals she knew.

She loved them, would do anything for them but she wasn’t sure they’d ever know that. She wasn’t even sure it mattered because isn’t it enough to have just that? Even if your not revelling in it? She’d never know.

Her way of connecting with people made an intimate relationship hard. She’d had a few but they never lasted more than a few weeks. She would over-analyse it until she found a reason why it would never work out - so what was the point in carrying on?

The thing she hated was that they were always such good guys. Not like him. At least she didn’t fall into that trap.

Mostly, she would meet boys, kiss them, dance and have a good night then ditch them. And texts are easy to ignore.

She lost her virginity to someone she’d known for a long time but never really known or been friends with. She still doesn’t know him.

They kissed, fooled around and eventually, after months of this, had clumsy, unfulfilling sex in his bed where he wore a neon yellow condom. This was no sad loss to her, she didn’t romanticise sex - it was simply a physical act. She never got close enough to anyone to let it be some big emotional connection.

She may have been without clothes but she was never naked.

The boy was a means to an end and perfect because they only saw one another when they fooled around, leaving no time for talking and questions and everything that came with that.

You probably assumed she is straight but this is just one more thing she keeps locked up. She does not know if she is or is not straight. All she knows is she has never kissed a girl. She does want to. She finds some girls attractive like she finds some boys attractive.

She has questioned her sexuality since she was 14 and had a strange and still not understood online encounter. At first it was a simple AOL friend, then a close friend who loved her, listened to her, trusted her, taught her, scared her, lied to her. Yet another lesson into why you should not give yourself to people. They will hurt you and stomp on everything you surrender to them.

She never wanted to be bitter. He made her that way.

He broke the trust and faith and belief in other people. She was his little girl until he choose booze and hate over her. He turned into the real person inside and he despised her for having a family that cared. He looked at her and saw everything he ever wanted to be and couldn’t stand that he hadn’t become it.

He shouted at her, threatened her, held a knife to her and uttered words to horrible and too much like dialogue from a melodrama to repeat. It took the guys in uniforms to save her that day.

But what about the months after?

No one knew. She never told them. That’s the time she picked this path. It was her fault. She never told them how badly she was being let down. Or how scared she was, how angry, how ripped apart, how much she just wanted it to end.

She never reached out and that was her greatest downfall.

But now, Right now there are arms reaching out to her, offering her a new start but instinct is to turn and run away. And she would have but this time, this person knew how she worked and held her in place by the shoulders.

They had a connection. They’d known it from the second they first met but both were good at pretending it was just fooling around.

Now one had made the decision to acknowledge how deeply attached they were becoming. And she finally spoke the most honest words she had in years.

“Please don’t. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

She waited for the other girl’s eyes to meet her own. “You think that it’s meant to be a certain way?”

“I know it’s supposed to be easier.” She paused and broke eye contact again. “And better for you.”

“I don’t want it to be easier. I just want you to let me in. Let me be a part of you.”

Her eyes were locked on the other girl’s converse covered feet. “You already are.” She part whispered, past mumbled.

As she cautiously closed the space between them while running the backs of her fingers down the flustered girl’s cheek. Their noses grazed each other for a lingering moment before their self-will and they kissed with everything they had.

When they broke apart, their breathing heavy and foreheads resting against each other, they were locked on the others eyes.

“I don’t want to run from you but I get stupid and scared.” She said with fear in her eyes.

“Tell me what I can do.”

“This.” She brought their two hands up to eye level and laced their fingers together.

“It’s a start.”