Little Words

With him, it was sets of words. He was really good at all words but it’s how he would piece together little words that got me.

I would replay them in mind, turning them this way and that, inside out and right side in. I would knead them into things completely new and like yeasted bread, they would rise to unidentifiable forms.

I haven’t always been good at words but he was and I suppose that’s what I liked. At times I would put my foot in my mouth his responses were unfailingly smooth and easy to digest.

Even his lies were good. They tasted like candy and I would eat them up because at least they were words.

I miss you. I love you. I'm sorry. I can hear these words in his voice.

They say sugar is the brain's cocaine, but why bother with sugar if you could just have cocaine?

I was never really into the hard stuff but for him, I would have snorted cocaine until my nose bled. I would have tracked my arms and the insides of my thighs with injection marks. For him I would have overdosed, just to wake up and do it all again.

You see, his words were addictive and I have always been prone to habits.

It was the summer before I moved into my first apartment and I had just gotten my first really nice mattress. I sat it on a tall bed frame because that's what adults do and I admired its perfectly unstained pillow top.

That mattress found temporary storage in my childhood room. Laying on it with him, I asked him about his words.

Last night you said you loved me, I whispered to him over the fluffy distance.

I was drunk, he told me, I didn’t really mean it.

I wish I would have responded with poetic certainty. I wish I would have said exactly what was on my mind and then been done with it. Most of all, I wish I would not have let him stay one more moment on my new mattress.

I can wish all I want but that did not happen.

I laid there because that’s what he wanted and I was good at doing what he wanted. For so long I was only good at doing what others wanted.

He could give and take his words from me and I was ready to receive and also release them at his will.

Today when I look back on these moments I feel nauseated by the girl who did not know she was enough.

If I could move back in time I would tell that girl that she's actually very good at piecing words together.

I would tell her about the power of kindness and the power of telling someone like him, fuck you.

Fuck his lies. Fuck his drunken admirations of love, and fuck him for breaking up with me that summer I went to Europe.

And also, fuck him for getting back together with me.

His tiny sets of words were what broke me and they are what saved me.

I was laying on my new mattress in my still kind of new apartment when I received words from him that I would never let go. The combination of these two little words made my ears ring and my blood feel cold.

She’s pregnant, he said.

I wasn't sure what those words felt like. I knew they weren't candy or cocaine. The feeling was completely new.

Looking back now, I know what I was feeling was the terrifying onset of freedom.

Those two tiny words set me free.