Bend and Break

I am a 41-year-old female who has been writing for 20 years. Having an abnormal amount of trauma, addictions, and mental health issues throughout my life, most of my writing has been my way of expressing any negative feelings I have inside me. Just a few years ago, I had put my pen down finally finding love that was healthy and experiencing happiness in its full form. I hadn’t had any desire or need to write (although I would occasionally make jokes about how something horrible needed to happen because I was having writers block). Well, like everything in life, nothing lasts forever; that happiness was ripped away suddenly and violently; leaving me without answers and more alone than ever. I avoided facing my pain, thinking at my age one should lose a partner, especially knowing they left this world feeling more pain and fear than anyone can imagine. So, I went back to what I thought was my only love left, drugs. All that did was mask my pain, making it harder to face each day. Then I woke up one day with the realization that it wasn’t just me avoiding his death but everyone was because of how horribly he died; I remembered learning growing up that our loved ones are kept alive in our memories, and everyone was acting as though he had never existed, so for him to be kept alive in any way someone needed to make it happen. So here I am yet again; doing the one thing I used as a type of medicine to ease my mind, but now I write with a second purpose, to make sure the love of my life lives on in our hearts and minds because I know he would have done the same for each person he cared about, and I will not allow his story to end so terribly that night in July 2023 because no ones story should end like that. Nin, every word I write no matter what the subject is, I write trying to give you the life you had taken too soon and also so people remember how amazing you were and the many amazing things you did and not just be the one bad thing that took you from us.