Saving Raven | ✔ |

-6-

October 5 2013

[Two years after]

I stopped crying because there are no more tears to shed. It's all over now.

I cannot swim anymore.

Alex knows that swimming is my life. He knows that the most important part of my body is my legs. He knows that my dream is to swim at the Olympics and win gold medals for our country. But he stepped at it like it was some kind of a useless twig. He just stepped at my dreams and crushed it to million pieces.

That first night when he brought me home my mom went ballistic. She was so worried because it was my first time to break my curfew plus I came home riding at the back of a dangerous looking motorcycle and with some unknown boy.

Alex and I both explained to her the reason why I came home late but I don't think she believed it because she just watched us the whole time and sent Alex home as fast as you can say the word 'boom.'

After Alex left my mom started her rants.

She told me to stay away from Alex. She told me not to talk to him anymore. Because Alex, she said was dangerous and I should stop seeing him.

But I didn't listened. I become stubborn and answered back to her, reasoning that she should not dictate who I should talk to or who I should make friends with. I shouted back at her and told her that I am old enough to make my own decisions and that she shouldn't judge people that quickly.

I defied my own mother just for him...Only for him.

I should have listened to my mother.

My mom was right. I should've avoided Alex when I still had a chance.

Truly, mothers know best.

After that day at the pool, Alex and I became really close. He became my confidante and so I was to him. I spent less time with Jesse and the girls and focused all my attention to Alex. Sometimes, I even skipped practice just to hang out with him and for us to go on dates.

Those ten months were the best and romantic times of my life. Alex can be so...addicting. Every time he is with me, the world just disappears and I can only see his smile, his lips...his everything. I cannot stop smiling and staring. During those months I learned to love Alex. I learned how to truly love him. And at that time he was the only one that mattered to me.

The only thing I cared about during that time was how to show my love to him and make him happy. I didn't even care about my own happiness anymore.

But that was the problem.

I cared too much. I cared too much about Alex that I forgot myself.

I forgot to love myself.

And I slept through the night only thinking about that.