gwensarah and johanny
july 17 1997
12:03 & 17 July 2003

I remember that is was the night before the funeral. I still wouldn't talk, not to you, not to anyone. I had managed to talk to him as I held his hand and watched the light fade from his eyes because I wanted to at least give him that but as you led me quietly from the room I lapsed back into the silence that had been my mainstay in the weeks following the attack.

I remember you sitting on the edge of my bed thinking I was asleep, words spilling out without thought or form..all the things you couldn't say to me if you thought I heard.

It was the second time in my life I had seen you cry.

Those words have stayed with me, I should have been here, I've failed you. You don't see how beautiful you are to me because that bastard has killed something in you and I don't know what to do or how to help you and it's destroying me. I just wish you would say something, anything..go to hell and leave me alone would even suffice just something because with each word that you don't say, there's thousands I imagine you saying that involve you hating me because I wasn't here.

Something inside me broke then, because all I could see was that I was ugly and broken and ohmygod I had told you everything, every last ugly fucking detail of the shame and degradation and how I was forced to do things and how I didn't understand how you could even stand to look at me without disgust.

And still the words just wouldn't come. I reached out to touch you and couldn't even manage that, instead I huddled there silently crying hoping you wouldn't notice I was awake.

Then there was the funeral, it was such a sunny day and you reached to take my hand as we started to leave. I remember saying, "You'll be going and I won't be coming with you, go home..there's nothing for you here." and I walked away. From you, from myself, from years of friendship, from the love we shared on my birthday and the months after, from everything that was me Before.

And something broke in you too, and every word you had held back came tumbling forth..and I remember one thing that you said above everything else,

I love you damnit, I've loved you since you were seventeen years old, I won't let you shut yourself away and fucking try to justify it. You wont fall because I won't let you and we'll get through this togther. If you want me to go home, I'll go but this is not the end of this.

And I wish I had just been able to say, "I love you too".

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