The Blackmail Dilemma

Dare Me To Realize

The thing about life is that nothing is guaranteed. That is, nothing in this life is promised to us. Happiness is, sadly, among the list of things that life cannot promise you. No one can promise you happiness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. And, sitting alone in my room, Stacie's journal open in front of me, I realized that change isn't promised either. Because the thing you're running from can and will find you again.

Honestly, I didn't know what was worse. I didn't know if the words written in the journal were the worst thing, or the fact that my heart was beating a million miles in my chest while trying to uncover the emotions that were lying dormant inside my heart. I knew that I couldn't go through with it. The vile things Stacie wanted me to do, I would never be able to go through with. The thing was, I didn't want to let her have leverage over me. After all the time she left me alone, let me hang with other people, I knew she had something in store for me. I had to have known that she wouldn't let me get off the hook that easily. And I had to have known that she would follow through with her threats.

She would reveal my secret to the whole school, but that didn't scare me anymore. That didn't scare me as much as ruining the people that I had come to love. I really love them. August, Kalilaand Janessa. I loved all of them like they were my family. With August, it was like something else. It was like he just got me in the way that no one else did before. It was like a breath of fresh air on a stormy night. And when we went to watch the airplanes, I knew I should've just told him my secret. I knew that I should've just looked him in the eye and told him what he told me. And what did he tell me? The secret that had been haunting him day in and day out for weeks on end. And I should've told him mine. Because it wasn't like I actually killed him.

Oh my God. My thought process was changing swiftly. A year ago, I would've thought that I killed him. Stacy and Nina had forced me to believe that it was my fault that he was dead, not his own. Not an accident. They had completely changed my thought process, but I had managed to reverse the damage. Maybe therapy was actually working. Maybe I wanted to go back again, although talking to someone else about your problems seemd stupid. It seems stupid to talk about my anxiety as if it's a real thing that can actually hurt me. It's weird to talk about the thoughts inside my head like someone can actually change them. But the thing was, I could change them. And it wasn't just therapy. It was meeting people in my life that actually wanted to change it. It was talking to people for the first time in over a year that didn't have it in for me. And that's when I realized, Stacey couldn't own me anymore. I couldn't let her own me anymore. What was written in the notebook, I knew that I couldn't do it.

I knew who I needed to talk to. There was only one person left that I could talk to. I knew it was Nelson, because he was stuck in the house and he had to listen to me. I could talk to Dad, but I couldn't burden him with this. Not now when he was already working overtime and trying his best to be a single parent. Nelson, he knew Stacy's tactics. He knew who she was inside and out, and he knew how vile and evil she could be. This is why I knew I had to talk to him, I had a reason with him. I had to get my brother back, because I missed how close we were after I finally opened up to him. I knew that as siblings, we would never be the best of friends, but we could ban together and ruin someone else's life. Stacey's life, the life that I knew I had to ruin before she ruined anyone else's. And as much as I hated being a vindictive person, so was she.

I knew I couldn't do it alone, and I didn't want to be this person anymore. I knew I didn't want to let the terrible thoughts in my head determine every single step I made. In order to make my life better, I had to bring the people I loved back into it. That was the only way to bring myself some semblance of happiness. Because I wasn't happy. I really wasn't. But I could make myself happy, and I could fight the anxiety.