K:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the only way I\u2019m able to tell you all of the things that I don\u2019t have the confidence to say out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
December 19th, 2013 was the first day I went without talking to you since the time we discovered each other sometime earlier in that year. I was locked away without any communication, and when I did earn my privilege for a phone call, you were the first person I asked about and the only thing on my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t talk to him,\u201d my mother said. I didn\u2019t quite understand, I was confident that all she had to do was put you on my allowed callers list. I tried explaining it to her, but she cut me off, \u201cWe know, Jane.\u201d I remained silent, \u201cWe know about the pictures, the texts, you can\u2019t talk to him anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next few minutes are quite blurry. The other patients were all sitting in the room waiting for their turn to call their parents, but they must have been herded into the other room when I started screaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t remember quite what I said, but I know it started with begging, asking how she could do that to me, that it wasn\u2019t fair… but she just kept on saying all the things that I didn\u2019t want to hear and I started screaming and yelling, \u201cI fucking hate you. You and my fucking father. Both of you are gonna fucking…\u201d but one of the nurses cut the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was completely enraged, the room was spinning or maybe I was the one dancing in circles as I screamed at every person to \u201cstay the fuck away\u201d from me. There must have been murder in my eyes, because they all held their distance. Fists clenched, I almost broke through a window, but before I threw my punch at the only target that wouldn\u2019t feel pain, the male nurse caught my attention somehow, I turned to him, stared through him and he said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlease, you need to calm down,\u201d his voice wasn\u2019t hostile, it was soothing, \u201cPlease, if you don\u2019t, I\u2019m going to have to put you in \u2018The Room\u2019,\u201d he pointed towards a door. An ultimatum? I clenched my jaw, \u201cI don\u2019t want to do it, you should already be in there, but if you calm down we\u2019ll pretend this never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I complied, and spent the next unknown amount of minutes pouring my heart out to this stranger. I doubt I was even comprehensible through my tears. He pretended he understood, and I pretended I was okay. I remember that he gave me some false sense of hope about being able to speak to you when I got out if I just tried to have a calm and rational conversation with my parents. I held on to that hope, it was the piece of driftwood I used to stay afloat after being abandoned in an ocean of my own loneliness and confusion. If I let go, I would have drowned in my own self-destruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once I got out of the institution a few days later, I was wishing I could go back. I begged for my parents to take me there again, but they saw through me and realized my threats were empty, and I had to stay with them and live every second of my life under a judgmental eye. I wanted to go back to room #9, where all of my peers respected me and most of the nurses were too pretentious for me to care about their opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I told my parents countless times, \u201cProsecute him, and you\u2019ll fucking regret it.\u201d They\u2019d ask me what I\u2019d do and I just smiled, and calmly stated, \u201cI\u2019ll kill myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That wasn\u2019t an empty threat, it was a promise, and they knew it. That\u2019s why you aren\u2019t in jail right now, not because of their compassion, but because I told them if they destroyed your life, I\u2019d destroy theirs as well. I let them know that my blood would be on their hands, and they had no choice but to listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
December 21, 2014 was the first time you spoke to me after that. During your absence that year, my life had begun to change. I made every attempt to win my parents\u2019 trust just to be allowed to say a goodbye. My sobriety was my strongest weapon in my battle to get you back, but it wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t until sometime in August that I realized you were gone and would be until I was 18, and I gave up all hope of earning you back. By then, my life had started turning around. I had a social life, and moments of genuine happiness. When I gave up on having you, I started to focus on myself for all the right reasons. You weren\u2019t the goal anymore, I was motivated to create a better life and overcome everything that I had gone through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day you called, I wrote an email to a friend, and this is what part of it said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI loved him entirely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
dedicated all of myself to him, and while those feelings of commitment had<\/p>\n\n\n\n
changed due to a year of complete uncertainty, I still care about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether or not he is in my life or not, he will always hold a place in my<\/p>\n\n\n\n
heart that no one will be able to replace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was there for me when my grandfather died, he was the one I cried to,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and he was the one who understood my abuse and made my problems his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The past is done, I can’t go back and change it. I can’t go back and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
change that he was in it, and that’s why I will always love him, because<\/p>\n\n\n\n
it was real.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of that holds true, even now, but this isn\u2019t a love letter. You\u2019ve caused a lot of pain in my life, much of which has put me through times of bitter resentment towards you. At this time, a year and a half later, I\u2019m almost at peace with the situation, but I\u2019m not willing to let you believe that this was an easy journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You left me alone for a year and two days, every single one of those days I was stuck wondering. I imagined the best of things, and I imagined the worst. I made many attempts at contacting you, begging you to say something to me, and every time I got nothing in return but another moment of heartbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saved you from ten years in prison, I defended you and rationalized every mistake you made to ensure that nothing bad would happen to you. I did this out of love for you. Even after months of silence I made sure that everything would be alright, but I was stuck wondering. I don\u2019t give a shit what my parents threatened you with, you could have found a way to reach out to me and tell me the truth so I didn\u2019t have to live in a constant state of confusion. You knew that it was hurting me, ripping me apart, and affecting me every day… yet you did absolutely nothing until I was on the edge of killing myself on July 9, 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went through times when I hated you just as much as I loved you because of all the pain your silence put me through. Now I have to look back on it, and I feel like a fool for letting you tear me apart like that. Now I know, it was all for nothing and I put myself through hell for someone who had lied to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The long silence had given me plenty of time to reflect on the situation, and I didn\u2019t need you to tell me that you weren\u2019t ever in love with me to know that it was true. Our last conversation only erased the tiny speck of hope I had left, and confirmed what I already knew to be fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
K: This is the only way I\u2019m able to tell you all of the things that I don\u2019t have the confidence to say out loud. December 19th, 2013 was the first day I went without talking to you since the time we discovered each other sometime earlier in that year. I was locked away without any communication, and when I did earn my privilege for a phone call, you were the first person I asked… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janedoe.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}