By Emma Wilson
I used to think that when she inevitably left me, she’d take everything I had left with her. Dramatic, maybe, but when someone scoops you up into their palms, tells you they want all of you, and holds you in the center of them for safekeeping, it’s easy to let her become your lifeline. I looked up at her, bugging eyes blinking at someone who I viewed as being so much more than I was, and felt nothing but awe and gratitude.
Part of me always knew that I was there on borrowed time, always testing the limits and inching closer to the small gaps between her fingers with each of my expressed worries and apologies for my chemical imbalances. I expected, maybe, to wriggle and slip through the cracks. I did not expect for one night her fingers to splay apart like the small animal in her hands had bitten her, dropping me to the floor, suddenly the revolting pest I feared I’d become.
In reality, I was already dying; There’s no other explanation for allowing myself to feel so small. I was a waning spirit of a person when she met me, and when she had me, I simply felt the security of being seen. I was still starving; I was still cold; I was still losing my hair, and gnawing my limbs off. She held me in her palms, but I paced around in circles, caught and fearful of the day I’d no longer be kept. I could be crushed in a quickly-clenched fist or thrown hard and far at her first impulse. I was lucky to have simply been let go of. The fall may have been a jolt, and the pavement is much colder, but it’s nothing new. It accentuated what was already there.
At least I have a larger area to pace now. I am no longer trapped in the confines of someone else’s mercy; I can no longer be flattened under someone’s thumb.
Contributor Bio
Emma Wilson is a sophomore English and secondary education major from Stow Creek, NJ. More importantly, she’s a writer.