Yours Truly ❁ n.k.h

• chapter one •

My heart feels like its being dangled over the tallest high rise in New York City, but I know that in reality, it never left your hands and facing that fact alone makes me nervous.

I am a different person without you, especially after all that you've done to me. And the scariest part is that no amount of anger or resentment can ever mask the feeling of how good it feels to be loved by you. To come home to you, to know that you chose me.

But eight months ago, you stopped looking at me and started looking through me, and I didn't like it. It made me want to run, Dinah. So here I am on a cold February morning with nothing but the clothes on my back, and as much as I don't want to admit it, that's what I'm doing.

The sky turns from day to night and day again before my eyes wander open. With each passing moment, I can see the trees morph into buildings and homes. Crimson, sage, mustard, and sepia seem to be the only colors that register to me for miles.

My feet carry me from bus to bus, and I don't even think I'm consciously doing it after a while. All I know is that with each excursion, I'm three more hours away from you.

I'm still a long way from Asheville.

It's the one place you said you'd never go, no matter how badly I tried to convince you. Everything about the South has always rubbed you the wrong way, but I guess that's what you get from a woman who grew up on the other side of the world.

For me, North Carolina was proving to be my saving grace.

My entire childhood I dreamed of running away and starting a new life somewhere. But in my home town, everything I wanted to run away to find, just kept finding me. I never needed to leave.

But something about Asheville always drew me close. It's as if my spirit knew I'd feel at home there, even in its empty room.

Last night was the hardest night of my life, and I hope one day you come to understand that no matter how bad this looks, I had my reasons. And they weren't for the ones that you think, not the ones that are gonna stare you right in the face when you sit at night trying to rationalize the things that I've done.

I'm going against every fiber in my being to write this to you because I know the day that I find the words will be the day you don't want to hear them. But sooner or later you'll want your explanation. So it may take me a while but I promise, I'll give it to you.

Until then, I can only tell you about right now. And currently, the rain is pelting from every direction and soaking me from my coils to my boots as I stand at this rest stop. They're the knee length ones you bought me two Christmases ago. The shoes are scuffed from everything that happened, but also my favorite shoes to put on, and the easiest.

My feet are hurting from all the walking I've done and my phone is in my hand, plastered and void of any life. I'm not in a rush to find a charger to turn it on yet.

This has been the longest I've ever gone in complete silence.

I don't know what to do with myself. You and I both know this much time in my head is never good for me, but so far I'm beginning to think this is what I need. Just a mental health retreat. Something that isn't forever, but just enough to shock my system, to make me feel alive again.

There's a woman on this bus that I've mistaken for you so many times, it's made me nauseous and paranoid. I have to stop myself from walking up to her just to prove to my mind you aren't here. But then she starts speaking into her phone and I want to vomit for an entirely different reason - her valley girl accent is fucking annoying. I don't get who she could have to talk to at nine in the morning anyway, but whoever it is, is getting an earful.

Me on the other hand - I don't feel like I've found my tongue or my brain. To be honest, a large part of me still feels really numb. Sometimes I wish my words could just leap off of the page and physically speak for me.

I don't get why it's so much easier to write things out than say them out loud. I'm too grown to be afraid of a conversation crushing me.

But you were always better at these things than me. You know how to articulate your words, and when and when not to feel things. I've always felt like a ticking time bomb in comparison to you. Like I could never hold myself together just to be enough.

Sometimes I wonder if you're just manipulating me. There's no way things are as easy as you make them feel once we put it all on the table, but you always do. You always find a way to take this huge... sandstorm fucking things up in my head, and make it into the softest disaster. In the beginning it amazed me. Now it just makes me feel inferior.

All I want is to be as sound as you. To be stable, to have my shit together. But I feel like as long as I'm with you, I'll never get there, because you care too much to let me do things on my own. I'm learning the fast and ugly way that if I want the freedom to make my own choices, I have to bury myself and my old life to do it. And that breaks my heart more than the day I found out you were planning to leave me.