as i shoulder the weight of the world

It's time for me to let go of the past. My longest and most serious relationship lasted six years. It wasn't the healthiest. In fact, it had a rocky start, and a rocky ending. We both projected our insecurities onto each other, like a tennis ball being hit back and forth over a net.  We were two loners who found solace in each other. Two hurt people who used their defensiveness like a shield to protect a heart that had been hurt so many times. The loneliness was soon replaced with co-dependency.  In my last relationship, I was cheated on. The trauma of that tore through our relationship like a knife. Paranoia. Insecurity. Trust issues. Checking your phone, reading your messages. You always told me you had nothing to hide, and it was true. You let me go through your phone, despite it making you uncomfortable. And then - one day, I just stopped. I stopped caring. I realized all this energy I put into being scared of getting hurt again was pointless. Then, the Zoloft came. Zoloft...

Hollow. Numb. Cold. Nothing prepares you for when you become a shell of a person. The sheer terror of vulnerability. The struggle to find the words to tell others how your body was nothing more than a vessel to quench an insatiable monster. Blacked out. Drunk. High. When I was rudely awakened to my legs being pulled with such an aggressive force, my first instinct was anger, to fight. But the pressure, the guilt, the feeling that I "owed" him... If I fight back, would I be able to take him? Shock. Fear. Frozen.  When he penetrated me, tearing open my skin, I cried. It hurt. But I didn't stop him, or say no. I lay there, motionless, dissociated from my body. I hoped and prayed that it would be over soon. Guilt. Regret. Anger. I held this intense fear of labeling the act as the horror it was. Why am I so scared to say the word? Rape. Because I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to believe that someone I trusted could do that to me. I didn't want to believe...