one night in tahoe, my dad said to me, "there are many people who will fall for you, but you have to be careful who you let catch you."

later my mom whispered to me, your dad doesn't want you to go to europe. you're his only daughter and he wants to keep you close.

but it hit me, stirred the part of me that is looking for any excuse to stay in the wind, to justify why continually staying in motion will keep me safe.

i thought about it that night, about suspicion, about how you try to make the right choice when the right choice could mean that whoever you put your feet on the ground next to, could suddenly one night put you in a cage just when you think that everything is safe.

i thought about how it's impossible to know for sure who someone is, and it's impossible to allow for the potential that with any given person, i might be settling, signing my life away, trading in potential for what is, perhaps tricked in a moment of vulnerability by a rose-colored illusion.

but yet, i don't believe any of that shit.

i cut david a little bit each day, just to see if he'll bleed because i have trouble believing he's real or that he's human.

today i hit an organ, but rather than fight me, he stepped back and calmly said, "i want to set you free. i want you to be happy. i want to show you how a real relationship can make you happy, what real love from a man means. i know you've been let down by a lot of people in your life but i'm not going to let you down...i'm going to do everything i possibly can to show you that you can trust me, to show you how lucky we are to have found each other. and one day, i believe you're going to see that everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be."

part of me knows everything that's being said, but another part can't stop the rumblings of that familiar anger, that shadowed demon inside me that seethes when it doesn't get what it wants, its proof of what it claims to know without question.

because people change and life is never constant, so how can one human being with no way of controlling the world possibly make promises when being human means you can't guarantee anything?

everything in me rejects him, screams to have him as far away from me as possible. i wanted to slam down the phone to hurt him, hurt him so irreparably that he would let go, his fingers caught in the door jamb of my retreat back into my world of echoes.

but then, in the heavy silence as night raged in my head, i heard a cool, low whisper.

are you done punishing him yet for wanting to be in your life?

and in the flood, when i opened my eyes, i realized where i was.