This is a terrible piece of writing, I know, but it helped me not to cut myself this evening when I really wanted to.
To anyone who feels, or has ever felt, this way, I hope you know you're worth so much more ❤️
Alfie thought of that pale face as she lay upon the gurney and the sadness ate at him; it's tendrils reaching out and suffocating him with his own thoughts. He didn't want to think of her, but he couldn't stop himself. He couldn't remove the images in his mind anymore than he could stop breathing.
All he could think was that she had been happy once.
Warm summer days filled his head. Those days when they would tear through the streets, shoeless and wearing hand me down clothes that never fit quite right but they didn't have it in them to care. The enemy ship was coming and if they didn't get to the church on the corner in time, they would be cannon fodder.
She would share her jam sandwich with him; giggling when it dripped down his chin. He would scowl and pull apart the bread before smacking her in the face with it. And even then that infectious laugh would bubble out from her throat, and she would use her hand to clean up the jam and then eat it. Waste not want not. That was the motto of their childhood; the words they heard their mothers speak but never truly understood their meaning until they were grown themselves.
Then came crisp autumn afternoons, raking up piles of fallen golden leaves until they could jump in them with screams of delight. Always in a dress, she rough housed with the boys, never afraid to get hurt and always sticking up for herself with angry words and angry fists. She always told Alfie that she would never be like her mother; she would never let a man rule her.
One day they were children and the next Alfie saw her stood there and wondered if she'd always looked that way. Had she always crinkled her nose when she was concentrating? Had her skin always looked as soft as silk? Where was the girl who jumped in muddy puddles and climbed drainpipes with him? Who was this young woman who took his breath away and made his heart beat like a galloping horse?
She smiled at him sadly, touching the collar of his khaki uniform and he wanted to cry. She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, her arms wrapped around his neck desperately as though she was afraid she would never see him again.
"I'll write to you," she promised.
And Alfie had lived for those letters as he sat in those muddy trenches. His fingers traced the lines of her messy scrawl, imagining the way she would be sticking out her tongue as she concentrated on forming each letter. She always hated writing, but for him she would do it. For him, she would do anything.
When Alfie came home, nothing had changed but at the same time everything had changed. He'd left a boy and returned a man. And every man needed a woman by his side. He needed her by his side. But while he had been gone, fighting for her, another had captured her heart. And although his own heart ached, to see her happy was a bittersweet feeling. Walking her down that aisle in place of the father she had never known to give her away was the hardest thing he had ever done, but he did it for her. Just like she would do anything for him, so would he do the same for her.
The smile on her face had been worth it.
But for the girl who once proudly proclaimed to never let any man rule her, that smile wouldn't last. That infectious laugh and those smiling eyes would wither and die so slowly that nobody noticed until it was too late.
He didn't leave marks, you see; he was too clever for that. Instead he hurt her with words that made her believe she was worthless and she was nothing. But he loved her and he didn't mean it and it was always her fault. If she hadn't have riled him up and forced a reaction from him, he would never had said such terrible things. He would never have scarred her heart.
She had been happy once, but that never could last. Not when he convinced her that those around her, Alfie included, didn't really care for her and they couldn't be trusted. She trusted the the man she had married and even when those nasty words left his mouth like sharp knives thrown at a board, she couldn't leave. Where would she go? Who would want her? She was pathetic. She was deranged. He loved her. No one could ever love her like he did and that's why he treated her the way he did. It was his way of showing how much he cared.
For the girl who had once been happy; the girl who had once proudly proclaimed to never let any man rule her, nothing stayed the same. She looked in the mirror and saw a stranger staring back at her; the exact same stranger Alfie saw when she passed him in the street. Always making an excuse not to stay and talk to him, but Alfie knew the reason. He could see it in her eyes. He could see the name written all over her body; in the way she moved, in the way she held herself. She was his property; that man who loved her like nobody else ever could.
She didn't want to be owned anymore. She wanted to be free. She tried to leave but always came back. He promised to change, he promised to be a better man and when that didn't work he threatened to kill himself. He would grin to himself when she returned, her pathetic little bag in her hand as she closed the door and committed herself once again to this life of misery.
She didn't want to be owned anymore. She wanted to be free. She wanted to smile again and feel happy. But there was only one way out for a girl like her.
When Alfie had looked down at that gurney, she hadn't looked happy and she certainly wasn't smiling. All he could hope for his dearest friend; the girl he had loved his entire life was that she was free.
And whenever he saw children jumping in those piles of leaves or running through the streets with the brightest smiles on their faces, he would see her. In his sleep, she haunted him with that laugh and he dreaded the day the dreams stopped because he didn't want to let her go again.
Not again.