Page 17

Two Minus One=One

“ Sometimes, I wish he never put that little red dress on me…”

—Me

I spent the last couple of months in seclusion since I murdered my best friend in my dreams.

I haven’t spoken to Tayden since the night at the studio.

Liam has noticed that I’m not okay lately.

He sees the cracks in me that I can’t fill quick enough before more begin to erupt.

To the world, I’m unphased, but to those closest to me, I am that of a tethered windshield.

My cracks spread far and deep, without insurance, simply coasting on a prayer.

Any minute, the smallest gust of wind surely will take me out and shred me completely, leaving me as a forgotten piece of trash on the side of the highway passed by the world.

My grave, nothing more than some grass and window trash—exactly what my father always said would become of me.

I had hoped the seclusion would help, but it hasn’t, and something must give before we do.

I always thought we had control; we were in sync for so fucking long.

Lately, we’ve become a black hole of chaos, a pure spiral.

What we had managed to maintain all these years has been peeling away little by little.

Since Tayden’s return, pain and memories began seeping across their designated space, and the veil that has always separated us started shorting out, allowing us to leak into one another.

At times, it feels beautiful—her a part of me, and I a part of her—working together and embracing parts of one another we never allowed the other to see.

Allowing the strengths of one to be utilized by the other while the pain of the other is carried by its counterpart when I can’t.

In other moments, colliding feels dangerous as fuck wrapped in delusion and complete chaos.

I haven’t decided if that’s because it’s uncharted waters or simply because it could, in fact, cause my demise.I’ve spent most of my life constantly going back and forth, trying to understand us better and figure out which is my truest form.

It’s not as though I wasn’t aware of her and her I all these years.

I’m not crazy like many would have liked to believe.

Like many paid by my father tried to convince me to be true.

I don’t have multiple personalities.

It’s genius, really, making my inner voice my best friend and a pocket in which my brain can store things I am not ready to handle for me until I am.

Some forever because the thought of ever opening that door is fucking petrifying.

The universe created a new tear in the divide the night T showed up.

A new spiral beginning, forgotten memories bubbling to the forefront of my consciousness.

I am simply not two but one.

I just possess a veil separating tragedy and survival.

I spent my entire adult life thinking the question I needed the answer to move on was: which is my truest form? Is holding onto the version of who I wished I could be, the version I believe I would have been if my entire life wasn’t a fucked-up trauma ball, the problem? Or is the version the world carved me into forcing my hand to become what I am to survive the problem? Keeping ourselves separate all these years since I first met Red has allowed us great success in a lot of areas in my life; nonetheless, it has created a lot of irregularity as well.

For all we do the same, there is more we do differently.

The way Red conquers everything she touches is just fucking magnificent.

Her ability to remain completely unfazed by others’ opinions towards her is unmatched.

She is calculated and firm yet desirable and honest.

She’s unstoppable and un–fucking breakable; the devil himself can’t touch her—only me.

On the other hand, the way Ivy has been able to love people regardless of their ill will toward her is of a saint.

She sees the good in every human that crosses her path.

You could find the absolute worst human in the world, and she could find something good about them.

She dreams of her fairytale and, in all these years, has never lost sight or desire of wanting to accomplish the one thing never given to her freely—love.True love, unselfish, and unequivocally pure love.

The more the world told her she wasn’t worth loving, the harder she held onto who they made her in hopes of one day proving them all wrong.

She never stopped her search no matter how many failures in her expedition to find love towards her like she has given freely to many, undeservingly so.

She couldn’t ever see the beauty in her wreckage and nourish it like I did, but damn she’s a fighter.

Ivy, the yin, and Red, the yang, fitting seamlessly together because we need each other.

One of the biggest wars any human will ever face is combining who they wish to be and seeing in the mirror who they have become.

Trauma has a way of separating the two, leaving you aimlessly walking your whole life unsure of who you really are.

In my story, figuring that out has been my number one killer.

Red is who I wish to be.

Ivy is who I’m trapped in.

It’s been months since I have seen Tayden.

Since the night my body feasted on O’Connor.

Funny how Tayden helped keep Red alive all these years without knowing it, yet he would be the tip of the iceberg, tearing us apart all this time later by simply walking into that Gala, causing our simple and fulfilled worlds, mine, Liam’s, Anastasia’s and even his own to be torn apart.

Reminding us of lost memories, forcingRed and I’s visions to collide.

I’m not sure how to be whole, but I know it’s not a destination.

It’s a tortuous, gut wrenching journey not many attempt.

One many never make it out of.

I have been fighting to accomplish it, regardless of how harrowing and lonely it has been.

I am the truest side effect of a child raised in complete emotional destitute.

A child forced to survive and become a chameleon to avoid further damage.

I grew into an adult, unsure of who I am, for I always had to be what I needed to be, what I was told to be.

What secured me survival at the end of another day.

A self-identity crisis between soul and tragedy, aspiration, and reality.

The lesson: You can’t hold onto who you would have been because she was never born, you were never allowed to explore her potential; she was stolen from you before you ever knew her name.

She is a mere dream in your imagination.

Red is who I am.

Ivy is who I never had the opportunity to meet, love, and mourn—the hope I hold onto.

The person I wish I could have met, but ghosts don’t live in reality.

I fucking wish I could have met you, seen who you would have been without them—without the trauma.

It would have been so beautiful to watch you grow and watch the world love you as much as I would have.

To see you in the mirror reflecting back at me, saying, ‘We did it, kid’—I’m so fucking sorry.

On days when I feel the battle of emotions that burn within me, unsure which path my day will end on.

I remind myself I can’t be the only woman who often wonders if those events hadn’t taken place, those traumas, who I would be today, how I would see myself now, and what life would have looked like.

In a twisted way, it brings me peace.

Ivy is simply the person she wishes others would have been for her.

Red is that part of me that accepts people for face value.

She possesses no filter when reciprocating the energy shown to her by others.

Something I have struggled to achieve.

I imagine my battles through trauma to coincide with motherhood.

I made the decision long ago to never bring life into this world.

How can I simply raise a child to know who they are when I don’t know myself? Would I be jealous of the childhood I never got to have? Would I deepen my identity crisis further by giving all of my time and energy to a small human, furthering my inability to find myself and accomplish what I want from life? I’m not a mom, but I imagine the identity between mother and self would be such a hard life, regardless of how big the ending reward is.

I’ve dipped my toe in the thought of traveling that road, and it’s beautiful.

In other visions, it’s tragic and brings me great anxiety.

How could I trust a world that was so cruel to me with my child? I crave it sparingly, mostly out of love for Tayden and his desire for it.

However, I know myself, and partially, it’s the selfish ideology a child would fix me—heal me.

The thought of it is inviting; the ability to be the parent I never got myself seems dreamy.

To experience love that is unwavering from that of a child you carry and raise is beautiful in theory.

However, my intense self-awareness can’t deny that it would be self-serving.

Society says I must be a mom, but Red reminds me it’s okay to break society’s rules and choose myself over that title.

My war of self-identity is a constant barrier.

My trauma is not the demon that keeps me up at night, merely the consequences left by it.

My lack of identity, my fear of human interaction, and my distaste to be a part of the world owns that corner of the darkness inside me.

I have spent a lifetime repainting my personality.

The shade of red never perfect.

No matter how many layers I apply, the texture of my scars reappear with every coat I brush upon myself.

My canvas is not what I wished it to be, merely what it is.

At some point, I will have to merge the two together.

I’ve always known this.

I’m just not ready to let go of her—my inner child trapped in a broken woman.

Tayden, who was once my savior, is now feeling more like my demise.