Part III · Exposure

Split Memory

You weren’t all bad. That’s what makes this hard. You held me like the ocean holds a ship— steady until the storm came, then swallowed whole without warning. There were days I swore you were made of light. The way you folded laundry while humming old hymns, the way your fingers traced my spine like it was sacred, the way you touched my face and said, “This is home.” And I believed you. I remember mornings with coffee and laughter, your hand wrapped in mine like it belonged there. I remember the way you danced in the living room, half asleep, hair tangled, smiling like forgiveness was easy. I held those moments like relics, proof that the rage wasn’t the whole truth. But when you turned— God, when you turned— it was a forest fire in a paper house. Your words weren’t just sharp, they were surgical, designed to carve away my worth and leave me apologizing for bleeding. You weren’t just angry. You were precise. You knew exactly how to twist the knife so it didn’t leave a mark on the outside. You turned love into a ledger, grace into a gamble, and every time I thought we were healing, you reminded me what it meant to love someone who never wanted to be saved. And still, I miss you. I miss the soft version— the one who brushed the hair from my face like it was a sacred act, the one who whispered my name like a promise you meant to keep. I know that version existed. I saw her. I held her. But I also held the version who screamed at me in front of the children, who shattered my things, who rewrote every bruise into fiction and called it love. You weren’t all bad. And that’s what makes it hell to grieve you. Because I don’t just miss the absence— I miss the illusion. The flicker of warmth in the fire that almost killed me. And I still don’t know how to separate the hands that held me from the ones that left me grasping for air.