beating not breaking

Soda becomes vodka and kisses turn into sex. Remember when dad’s shoulders were the highest place on earth and your mother was your hero? Race issues were about who ran the fastest and war was only a playground game. Remember when the most pain you felt was when you fell over and scraped your knees and goodbyes only meant until tomorrow? 

And we couldn’t wait to grow up..

Missing them is never going to stop hurting. It might be in the back of your mind, you might even forget about it for a while, but it will always be there. It’ll hit you when you’re least expecting it. That’s the worst part of it, you know? The pain comes out of the blue. You’ll be sitting drinking a cup of tea at 3 in the afternoon and you’ll remember how they took their tea with milk, no sugar. You’ll remember how their hair used to stick up all over the place because they would forget to brush it. You’ll remember how they used to laugh so hard that tears would run races down their flushed cheeks. But these are good memories, right? This is how you want to remember them.

Next minute you’re doubled over, clutching your stomach and silently screaming to release the pain that’s tearing into your heart. Muffled tears and crescent-shaped scars on your palm where you clench your fingers so hard to stop yourself from feeling the knives in your stomach, in your back, in your heart.

This is pain. And this pain never stops.