Gala
I stood there in broken sunlight and an evening gown knowing that I was never going to make it out that door. I'd held it together so far, doing my best to put it out of my mind. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to be accommodating and helpful and completely false for the next six hours. It just wasn't going to happen.

"I don't want to go. I just want to stand here and cry."

So I did. I let loose and allowed myself to be taken in and swallowed by so many emotions and horrid, horrid thoughts.

I felt guilty. For hours and weeks and years I have felt guilty. I shouldn't have spoken to her that way. I shouldn't have let her think that I don't need her. I shouldn't have let myself think that I don't need her. But I did. It's been done and I don't think that I'm strong enough to undo it. I'm not all that sure of what kind of eraser I need to get rid of this mess that I have so "innocently" contributed to. And even if I did, I just know that I couldn't afford it. But maybe that's my problem... I'm allowing myself to afford things that I really shouldn't be investing in and those things that honestly deserve my time and energy are being left out on the porch to be sun-scorched and rain-soaked and inadvertently forgotten by me. But that's not entirely true. Yes, I am placing them all right outside. I can see them. I know that they're there. I just do what I can to ignore them. But those few precious things to which I have given myself deserve me. And I deserve them, damn it. I have devoted myself to the dance and to my advancement in that world. I am focusing my energies at school because someone told me once that I should. So here I am. My love and my life, Eric, deserves everything I can give him. And that's what I was thinking as the mascara running down my face threatened to ruin my dress.

He walked up behind me, without hesitation, and wrapped me in his love, protecting me from all those hurtful things inside.

I was watching a commercial that showed all these images of angry mothers and fathers and confused and angry children with a voice over telling the people that children learn violence for life. I cried. I watched a hysterical actor mother slap her "incolent" actor child and I cried. But not because I felt empathy for all those physically and emotionally abused children out there. I cried because I remembered - because that woman was my mother hurling her beer-heavy breath into my pores and I was that confused and angry child with tears that made me want to hate her too.