this is going to be updated with a new month of entries every monday because I actually have a lot of this written out already so lookout
so comment rate subscribe follow all that cool stuff and hmu on tumblr (amirmitchell) ty also rec it to people because this is my fave thing I've ever written
July 11, 6:57 pm
I saw a counselor today.
Riley forced me, but he was nice and his smile seemed genuine. He's requesting that I write to you. I'm to write whatever I want to say to you with the date and time plastered at the beginning each entry. I'm limited to one entry per day, but, other than that, the possibilities are endless.
It's a diary, of sorts-just for you.
You hated diaries. You called them childish scrawls. You wrote masterpieces about the lives of your imaginary friends, but a novel about oneself was ridiculous. But you won't see it, so it's not like it matters.
Besides, you never cared much for anything I made for you anyway.
July 12, 4:12 am
I was nineteen when we met.
I forget that sometimes, as strange as it sounds.
I was nineteen when we met and it took less than two weeks of us dating for you to corrupt me into the mindset of an oblivious child.
I can still remember the first time I ever feared you; It was the night that you told me I was too close with Riley. We'd been together for exactly ten days, and you demanded for me to stop spending so much time with her. You didn't see me enough, you claimed.
I laughed at you like I usually did- you were so funny back then- and you grabbed my wrist with a darkness in your eyes that I didn't believe could exist in such a gorgeous sea of green.
It was the first time I ever feared you, but it wasn't the last.
When I told Riley about it, she said for me to get away from you. She said that you would hurt me.
I stared at the bruise forming below my palm, wondering which bracelets I owned could cover it as I gave my best friend excuses as to why it was okay. I gave her excuses as to why I was okay.
It was because you told me that I should be spending my time with the boy that would love me, and I had hope for that, John. I had hope for you. I had hope for us.
And with that hope, I stared into the vexation clouding your gaze and I agreed.
At just nineteen, I hadn't known what hope truly was until I met you.
At just nineteen, you should have known better than to take advantage of my freshly blind optimism.
July 13, 4:39 am
Are you awake right now?
You used to have trouble sleeping sometimes, so I would stay awake to make sure you were sound. I used to trace the pad of my finger up and down your nose until you softly snored, then I'd wait another twenty minutes to be sure.
I'm not sure if I liked you sleeping because of the innocence that shone on your face or the fact that you couldn't tear me down while unconscious.
July 14, 8:57 pm
I had an event tonight.
My art hung in a gallery with established artists.
My soul hung in a gallery with established artists.
I painted a piece of hope and love. I used soft strokes to showcase a scene of a young girl with bright eyes and a racing heart; a scene of a young girl in love.
I titled it after you.
July 15, 5:28 am
I cried to you about the late nights in high school after Shawn left; how my mother would drink so much she couldn't recognize me.
She would lock me out of the apartment and I would sit in the grimy halls of my building until morning rolled around. She would shatter glass at my feet so I couldn't go near her. She would scream at me how worthless I was, how little I was making of myself.
I told you that it was because she thought she was talking to herself. She would tell me about her terrible nightmares of shouting at the mirror.
I believed you when you persuaded me that she knew she was talking to me.
I worshipped you for being selfless enough to put up with me through my disappointments.
I thanked you for loving me while you cooed how cruel some people could be.
July 17, 2:33 pm
Lucas took me out today. We went to the mall, and we shared a milkshake. He gave me his jacket when I shivered, and I didn't have to pay for a thing.
It was the first time I'd been alone with a boy other than you since… well, since you'd threatened to leave because you thought I was cheating on you our second month in. You used to hate when I spoke to Lucas.
But I enjoyed my time with him. I'm allowed to have enjoyed it.
July 18, 3:37 am
I miss you.
Well, I miss who you were to me when we met.
I miss who you were to me until I found out the truth.
We were so happy, even if it was only for that first week. That was all it took for us.
We danced in the streets like we were a part of a movie.
We kissed like we had never felt the rush of infatuation before.
We laughed so loud the entire city could hear us.
We were so happy, and I did nothing but fall for you more and more.
Why didn't you catch me?
July 19, 4:12 am
I tried not to drown.
Your veins were rivers, flowing deep within you to my lips on your wrist when we fell asleep together.
Your birth marks were lakes that I marked with my teeth across your neck as if I were a cartographer.
Your freckles cascaded as a waterfall from the tops of your cheeks to the edges of your shoulders, spread sporadically in a beautiful oasis.
I tried and I tried and I tried not to drown.
July 20, 10:49 pm
You used to hold me as I shared stories of my childhood, of Alaskan adventures in the Aurora Borealis during storms and Peruvian escapades through deep caves after earthquakes.
You promised that we would share moments like that.
You promised that we would explore our own world whenever I felt the need to hide away.
You promised to protect me.
July 22, 2:43 am
I confided in you that my father had abandoned me about a month into our relationship.
You promised me that you would never leave me like he did. You said that you loved me too much to ever want to be without me. That you needed me as I needed you.
A week later, I went shopping with Farkle and Riley, and you screamed that my father was lucky to get out when he did. He should be grateful that he didn't have to put up with me like you did, you said.
It's taken me three years to realize that I shouldn't have believed you.
July 23, 7:46 pm
Your favorite dessert was apple pie- more specifically my Gammy's.
You loved Gammy the most of anyone I introduced you to. We used to spend every Tuesday night with her for dinner, and she made that damn pie every time, don't you remember?
You should, considering you had a four slice minimum.
We would all laugh and you would read her passages of your latest work.
She defended you, y'know. The first time I wanted to break up. It was about five months into our relationship, and I wanted to end it.
At first, at least. She tried defending you and then she saw hues of purple and red staining my skin before she told me to run from you as fast as I could.
July 24, 10:47 pm
Lucas and I have known each other since we were children. We liked each other once, but I never told you that.
There wasn't much to it; an unresolved middle school romance that lead to sexual tension throughout high school. Our friend group was small, and it was pretty much unavoidable.
You told me that I should be scared of him.
You were always shitty about my friends. Riley was too sweet, Zay was too funny, Farkle was too smart- always one thing after another. I was just waiting for them to realize that they didn't want me in their lives.
But it was always different with Lucas. You didn't want me to fear losing him, to prepare to leave him before he left me.
You wanted me to fear him.
It all clicked in your mind the night that I told you that he has anger problems.
It was a few days after our honeymoon week, the one where nothing went wrong. He had said something to you about the way that you were grabbing me or talking to me, I forget which, and you asked me what his problem was after he had left.
"He's just a bit overprotective," I said. "He doesn't mean any harm. He struggled really badly with anger back in Texas, so he has this issue with getting worked up too quickly. Don't mind him."
I wish I had noticed the smirk that crept onto your face when I revealed that to you.
I didn't, though, and you dropped the topic of Lucas for the night.
It made you uneasy, you claimed. I tried to brush it off, but when I went out for lunch with the gang a few days later, you made it a point to ask if Lucas would be there.
Now, you always asked who I would be with when I went out. You made sure to approve of each person I would spend my time with- so to the normal point of view, you asking if Lucas was accompanying Riley, Farkle, and I to the local Olive Garden was normal.
I knew different.
When you typically asked who I would be going out with, you'd want a list. You'd check the ratios of girls to guys, you'd check to make sure it was no one that would try to steer me from you, you'd check to make sure it was no one that would look close enough to notice the fading patches of purple scattered on my limbs. But on that day, you didn't ask who I was eating with or tell me what you'd want brought back. You stared at me with a dark look and demanded to know if Lucas would be there.
"Of course, he will," I answered honestly. I tried to be as honest as possible with you.
"Then, you're not going."
I was raised better than to be held against my will, so when I said, "Yes, I am!" with a stubborn look, it wasn't a shock to you that I rushed towards the door.
You weren't raised better than putting your hands on your loved ones, though, so when I said, "Yes, I am!" with a stubborn look, it wasn't a shock to me that you slammed me back against the wall and told me that I wasn't going anywhere.
July 25, 5:45am
Do you know what I think bothers me the most when I think about you trying to corrupt Lucas to me? You trying to corrode the what I had with him?
You tried to tell me over and over about how he would snap, how he would hurt me. You told me that that you didn't feel safe sending me to spend time with him, so I wasn't allowed to.
It was for my own good.
Not once in almost ten years of knowing Lucas Friar have I ever been afraid of him. He would get angry, angrier than he should've, and I would slip between him and whatever he wanted to destroy with ease because I knew that he would never lay a hand on me.
Yet, with your knuckles turned white from your hold on my bicep, you tried to tell me that he would.
July 26, 10:39 am
I wanted to marry you.
I wanted to follow you through every adventure, every wrong turn. I didn't care who didn't love you because I did.
I wanted to promise my life to you with a ring I couldn't afford and a ceremony without the people that I'd lived my entire life with because you didn't like them.
For a short three years of my life, I believed in princes, princesses, and happily ever afters. All because of you.
Even if it wasn't truly the ideal picture I painted blindly, I still had a time of pure unadulterated faith in true love. Thank you for that.
July 27, 7:37 pm
My family never liked you.
My friends, my mother, the Matthews, or anyone else I introduced you to cared little for you, but I loved you so much that it didn't matter.
I thought we could be the trope as old as time; a rough around the edges fixer upper and a stubborn girl who was naive enough to actually believe she could change him.
It was just that you were far worse than just rugged and short fused.
No, you were types of dangerous I didn't even know existed.
Your edges were made of shattered shards of radiant girls with beaming hearts. I tried to shape you into something better, but you had jagged edges that sliced through me like paper so often that, soon enough, I became a broken point to you just as every girl before me.
Late at night, I still lay awake wondering who I've cut.
July 28, 1:34 am
When I was a little girl, I wanted to move mountains.
How silly, right? A bleach blonde second grader standing at the height of a preschooler babbling on and on about the mountains she would one day shift.
Josh still listened.
It was between the periods of cooties and age gaps, and when I skipped towards Joshua Matthews during a family game night, boasting about the changes I would one day make in this world, he listened to me and I adored it.
He called me tonight, and he asked about you. I could hear the grateful smile on his lips when I told him that we had broken up.
"You deserve so much more than that, Maya," he spoke to me with a heavy heart. "You deserve so much more than how he treated you. You deserve a man who wants to watch you move mountains as badly as you strive to do so."
It is between the periods of pain and recovery, and when he reminded me of the little girl I had lost long ago, I cried to him as he continued to mend my swelling heart.
It was my turn to listen.
July 29, 1:39 pm
Do you still think of me as a traitor?
You thought I could be different. You thought I could see past your temper and your rough touch. You thought I could be the one to finally help you, but in the end, you spit at me while you growled that I was just one of them.
My poor, misunderstood love, I'm sorry I couldn't save you.
July 30, 6:43 am
I stopped talking to my friends for you.
Riley would call and call and I'd stare at the photo of me kissing her cheek that illuminated my screen before tossing my phone to the end of your bed and kissing your lips.
You tasted of whisky you shouldn't have had and adventure, a large contrast to the security I found in Riley's blushing cheek.
Lucas and Farkle tried to text, but after seeing so many read messages with no replies they just stopped sending them. You convinced me that their silence meant that they didn't care for me anymore, yet when you ignored me, it was for good reason.
You were the boy who would love me, after all.
July 31, 11:27 pm
Beside me right now, a beautiful girl sleeps with long, fluttering lashes and a grip on my waist like she's afraid I'll slip away if she doesn't hold me back.
I hate you for manipulating me to hurt her the way that I did.
Riley Matthews deserved more than to even have to be in a room with scum like you, let alone watch you shatter the soul of someone she loves.