It All Started With a Diary

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"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." – Lao Tzu

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Chapter 87
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I'd been staring at the necklace for an hour. Or maybe longer—I wasn't exactly keeping count.

By the pain in my spine, I knew it'd been a long while, though. The longer I stared, the more conflicted I grew.

As soon as Kade left, I ripped it from my neck, and threw it as far as I could. The chain seemed to burn my neck the longer I had it on. I hadn't bothered to pick it up since then; it'd just been in the corner of my room.

My arms pushed off my bed as I approached the necklace. It seemed to falter my steps the closer I grew to it.

I picked it up by its chain, my shaky fingers turning it around until it faced me. I was surprised that it hadn't cracked. It was still as perfect as could be, completely oblivious to the mess around it.

I stepped back until I felt my knees bump into the bed. My eyes ran over the picture carefully, as if it would disappear from history if I made the wrong move. Possibly because it would.

It was six-thirty in the evening, now. Even though I spent the entire day pondering my answer, I knew it was the time to make a decision. I needed to have one in thirty minutes.

But, it was all so irreconcilable.

I had so much anger, so much hurt and rage toward Kade at the moment. He tore me in two without a second thought. Now that I knew he was doing it to protect me, it changed so much, but it didn't diminish the result of it all, regardless. He didn't fight, nor did he at least try and save us. He let me go as if I were nothing to him, as if we were nothing.

Those words were his. He was in charge of his actions, of the pain he inflicted throughout me that day, and he would have to live with the consequences. I couldn't even fathom seeing him again before yesterday.

That same love remained though, no matter how badly I wished for it to flee. I didn't think a certain amount of time could rid of that value.

He was embedded into my blood, and he wasn't going anywhere. Our existences were forever intertwined, even before we were even born. Between our parents friendships, and even as children through the park. Somehow, we had formed a tie that stood above all of that. One that could never be torn from history, or from either of us.

Kade was the one to teach me all of the delicate versions of care, of patience and virtue, of love. Of myself. He had shifted every bad, into good. He had helped me find the good. I couldn't claim that he found that girl under the rubble, but I could say, that he helped me clear the wreckage, the pain and the scars to help me find her myself.

There were too many factors, too many strings and memories that couldn't be extirpated from me no matter how far I ran from him.

I remembered his friends' pleas to me. Their desperation was raw and truthful, and it was painful to witness. It meant that they knew, and understood that Kade was truly in danger. That he really was.

I placed the necklace down after one lingering glance. The picture seemed so close, yet so far. If only we could have stayed there forever.

Most of my life, I thought of myself as a bad person. As a burden. It was stemmed from the woman who brought me into this world, the last person it should have been from. I remembered all of the times she deemed me the bad seed, and after so long, I began to believe her.