Broken or bent, you are still beautiful.
Just because you are not a dainty flower does not make you any less of a woman.
You are beautiful.
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”- William Shakespeare
"Are you sure that you are ready for this?"
This feels like the twentieth time Eric has asked me that since we left the house. I know he's worried, maybe a little anxious, but me? My heartbeat is steady, my breathing slows. I've waited for what feels like my entire life for this one moment.
I nod my head again, giving him another soft smile, reaching over and squeezing his hand. Eric's eyes are focused on the road, shielding me from the warm, chocolate, irises that lay under his lids.
He was handsome, and I do mean that in the most legitimate way. He looked like the offspring of Channing Tatum and Liam Hemsworth, so therefore, he was beautiful. But, when you come from the world I came from, handsome didn't matter. Men of all shapes and sizes were dangerous.
In my world men wanted one thing from women like me.
"We are just warm bodies they make temporary homes in, Anna."
My mom used to say to me before she'd take another random guy into her room and let him use her body up. Use, use, use…
Use it until she was hollow. Calling her a human after all of that was pushing it. She was empty, all gone, nothing left but bones and skin. The electricity inside her soul had been past due for too many months.
I promised myself I wouldn't be that girl. I'd find a handsome prince and he'd love me. We would be the kind of love story they make movies about. He'd save me from the fire breathing dragon and take me far away from the lonely tower. We'd run off into the sunset towards our happily ever after.
But like children eventually realize that Santa Claus is fiction. I too realized fairy tales are just the same.
I told myself I wouldn't be that girl, until I was that girl. Until one of those men got bored with my mom, who was too drugged out to know he'd even left her room. I told myself I couldn't be that girl, until he was in my room, on top of me, inside of me, robbing me. Stealing my hope, my innocence, my magic, the light inside me. What he left? Ice, bitterness, and dried blood on my pink sheets.
I didn't even flinch when he zipped his pants up, ran his hand across my face and smiled. I curled into a naked ball freezing for a moment. It was a moment in time when an hourglass stops before it turns upside down completely. I was suspended sideways, unmoving. When the hourglass finally flipped, and the sands of time started suffocating me, I walked into my mother's room seeking naive comfort.
She rolled over on the stained mattress covering her privates with a dirty silk robe. I watched as she grabbed a half smoked cigarette from the ashtray, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
"'Bout time you start earning your keep around here."
I was twelve.
What followed was natural. Not like plants growing or rain after a drought, natural like a disaster. A hurricane, an earthquake, chaos, destruction, darkness.
I started running after that, running towards another trap that disguised itself as an escape.
I wanted to forget. I wanted to go to a place where men who could be my grandfather didn't leave their sweat on my body. A place where the sun always shone, the water was warm, and people loved me enough to say something. To help. To care.
I wanted to be free.
Eric's eyes held the kind of freedom I had spent my entire life searching for. The kind of eyes that told me he slayed dragons and saved girls trapped inside of dark towers.
Except I wasn't a princess, I was a homeless junkie, two days sober, and going through the early stages of withdrawal when I met Eric.
I was staying at a shelter in the middle of a bum-fuck town, just trying to stay warm, and earn enough money to buy my next high.
When I started drugs I was in middle school, just a little pot to numb my mind from the demons and paralyze my body from the men who treated me more like property than a human being.
"A hole to keep their dicks warm, Anna."
"You're worthless, Anna."
Self-worth never existed in my life.
High school came fast. I started pills, LSD, and molly. I needed something more. I got older and they got rougher, pot wasn't cutting it anymore. I needed something stronger to fend off the voices.
After graduation, I left my hometown and started traveling, hitchhiking, stripping, whatever to get me where I was trying to go.
Blow came next, and then like a snake who'd always been waiting for me, he found me.
Heroin found me on the floor of a dirty bathroom of a trap house, cross faded out of my mind. He slithered through my veins, and I swear, I could touch God, if he was even real.
Heroin took it all away, everything. I couldn't feel anything, fuck, I didn't even know if I was alive until I woke up a day later.
I'd never felt more alive than when I was half dead.
I was on a road to nowhere. A dead end street screaming my name. But like a silent guardian, a mysterious savior, she happened. She was fate's retribution for all the pain it had threaded me. She was my angel, the wakeup call I so desperately needed. All because of a one night stand with a guy who had gentle eyes and a charming smile.
He was one of the few good ones. One of the best. Every day for the rest of my life I'd be thankful to J. He tried to love me, tried to heal the broken pieces of me, and he gave me the sweetest gift.
When she started growing it was as if she was healing me from the inside. I was determined to be someone she could be proud of, to be the person I needed when I was young. Every night she comforted me, her heart beat lulled me to sleep every night. With her, I felt hopeful for the first time in my life.
I was okay in the beginning, but when she came into the world, when she left the safety of my body, I was alone again. The demons came back and I couldn't fight them off.
Who was I to taint this innocent soul? This angel who deserved the world? How could I do that?
So I did the only thing I'd ever known in my life.
I ran.
I was the worst kind of person, and I still am, just sober now. I left her. I left my angel. I left her with those big green eyes, wondering what she ever did wrong to make me leave. My spirit broke every time I thought about her waiting up for me to come home on many countless nights, wondering where I was. Hoping, I'd walk through that door. I did the worst possible thing you could ever do to a child.
I made her feel as if she wasn't enough. In reality, she was everything.
I never deserved Eric. I never deserved anything life had graciously gifted me, not J, and certainly not my little girl. Yet, here Eric was. Swooping in with a heart of gold trying to save me. And here I was, driving to seek redemption, three years later, and two years sober.
Eric and I happened as a slow burn. I was so broken, so screwed up, the possibility of dating seemed out of reach.
With no false motive, he came to the shelter every day. Guided me through detox, even the parts where I screamed through the night and the puking. Eric didn't heal me, Eric paved the trees down that were blocking my road to recovery.
I was six months sober, working in a diner and attending therapy. I was on my feet, wobbly, but standing. Eric came in for coffee every day, until he finally worked up the courage to ask me out.