i get hooked on the wrong things. or maybe it’s just that in all this time, no matter how badly i tried, i never mastered the art of giving up hope. it was all i had for so long. maybe i just got used to the taste of it on my tongue. i believed in friends who hurt me so many times that i got used to the way they grated against me. i trusted lovers long after my sheets smelled of their small betrayals.

i remember the moment i realized my own vulnerable heart, the open wound that trusted all. he was laughing behind a closed door about my poor excuse for a body. i crumbled under the weight of the things he said about me.

and later - and later, with his palms on my cheeks - he promised me that it wasn’t true. that it was just joking. but i had heard the tone in his voice, the honesty, the secrets he told that belonged to me. the way he was using my body.

he held my eyes. “please stay,” i told myself: don’t go back, you know he meant everything. he said. “i love you.”

despite everything, with this terrible weakness hope, i felt myself believe.