Second Chances

The world tells you he's treacherous.

But you are blind; always have been.

He waltzes right through your defences. He captures you the way no one can - in light and shadow, in glory and disarray. To him, you bare your mind and spill your soul. He listens and locks them all away, all those little odds and ends you pick up as you go through your life.

Between the two of you, there are a fair number of tantrums. Shouting, screaming. Fuming silences. Refusing to budge. But he was never one for letting tiffs ferment and sour, and before long, he's back in your arms. After all, how can you resist a guy who shows you the world, who even sings you to sleep?

He becomes your heart. He promises you forever.

And he betrays you, cripples you.

You cocoon yourself in your misery, you curse your naiveté, you mourn all that you had. All that you lost.

You're furious.

You dig up trenches, put up fences of barbed wire around your wounded heart. You swear to never let anyone in that far (so close, too close) ever again. Never again will someone steal your mind and soul. Never again will anyone reel you in so completely, wholly.

Slowly, the storm in you abates, leaving chaos in its wake. You take a deep breath, square your shoulders and turn back. You wade through the rubble, salvage what remains untouched. Bit by jagged bit, crack by crack, you try to put together the shards of your broken heart, but it's almost like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with no hooks or curves to tell you what goes where.

But you go ahead.

Never again, you tell yourself as you find your feet, as you rediscover your  rhythm, as you put back together your old life.

And then he waltzes right back in.

Never again, no, never...  your head chants desperately, but a part of you is on song the moment your eyes find his. And he's right there - rugged, worn, but warm and solid and there. He's sorry, he's a clean slate and your defenses crumble as if they were a house of cards and it is all too easy. You need him.

It is all too easy to go back to what you were once - he feels like an extension of yourself, he connects you to the world. He is there to listen, capture, caress, lull you into sleep. Just as he once did.

But some piece of you remembers. Resents him for letting go. Hates him for coming back, hates him for making you feel weak. Hates yourself for feeling weak.

Yet you love him anyway.

It is maddening, this intricate dance of love and hate and everything in between.

But he's yours and you're his.
And for now, you don't want to let go.

(However, this time you're going to backup all your data.)

---

If you're wondering what brought this on: someone messed with the pattern lock on my smartphone, the get-in-with-Google-sign-in didn't work, I had to do a factory reset and I lost all non-SD-card data. Tons of notes I'd prepared for HSEE and science quiz, writing prompts.... I'm still grieving.