Scribbles, Thoughts, and Doodles.

Scribble: Puzzle, Tangrams, And Mind-Games.

I live my life as a puzzle; an endless puzzle. Every experience, every moment, and every memory is a new, distinctive piece. He has only 4 pieces. He lives as a child's tangram. Living a meaningless life, he longs for more; more excitement, more pieces, more control.

I have always struggled with self-love. My mind is often flooded with insecurities, so I suppose I am an easy target. I'm the type of person who easily loses track of what is real and what isn't. I usually find myself falling for facades and being taken advantage of. I'm always too scared to speak up. But that doesn't mean I don't try.

"Please don't," I asked. Nothing changed; panic set in. I began choking. It felt like I was choking on air. Since when was oxygen poisonous? I was wheezing, hardly inhaling.

The sounds escaping me were becoming quieter. I had lost my voice. However, I was still capable of speaking, but when I said stop, he didn't listen. That was it. From that moment forward, there was no black, no white - just grey. My perception of everything had changed forever.

My jigsaw life had been taken apart, mixed up, and scattered across town. Nothing was certain. I no longer trusted myself. I didn't know who I was. Did I deserve this? There must have been something I did that led me into this situation.

Pain, fear, confusion; it all hit me at once, and it hit me hard. Anger and frustration; it was the most overwhelmed I had ever been. My left and right eyes competed. 'Who could cry the most tears within 30 seconds?' As the water came streaming down my red-hot cheeks, he paused. It didn't take him very long to notice, to realise that something was bothering me. That means he cares, right? He looked into my eyes, and no matter how hard I stared back, how hard I tried searching his, for at least a glimpse of remorse, I got lost. I couldn't see anything; his expression was blank, almost empty. And then, just as I was about to give up, I witnessed the lightbulb above his head illuminate. The cogs in his brain started turning once again. There it was, the realisation of what he had just done. His lips parted, and his brows were now angled upwards. He stuttered, "I- I'm sor- I am-"

"It's okay." I cut him off. What he did was far from okay, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt; he understood that what he did was wrong, so he wouldn't do it again, right? He wouldn't hurt me intentionally. He's not like that. But maybe I was blinded by love.

He stole my jigsaw pieces to try to shape them into ones that would fit into his puzzle, to bind us together. Yet all of his hard work went to waste. Even though he cut them all up, my pieces were made specifically for my puzzle. The carefully sculpted shapes and sizes of my beautiful mystery jigsaw were, however, shrunk down to fill the gaps in his bland, sorry, 4-piece tangram. But it didn't work. It didn't fulfil his needs and just left me with missing pieces; holes in my life and holes in my heart. Despite the utter misery he had caused me, I couldn't leave. He always held out his hand after pushing me down. He held onto the pieces that I was missing, the pieces I thought I needed. Slowly but surely, self-harm began. I started to cut my unique puzzle pieces into squares. I had no voice unless it spoke for him. My opinion did not matter. I was not heard until I said what he wanted. I trusted him. It wasn't half as bad as before. I believed he was just trying to do what was best for me. He was trying to protect me.

I'm not ready to pick up where we left off. I don't trust myself enough. There is still something I am doing wrong that causes him to abuse me. I sanded all of my edges, rounding them out. I no longer am a puzzle; my life is the same every day, and I just follow his orders. I thought he was starting to hear me, although they were his words coming out of my mouth. I am finally being listened to. That's until I returned to the beginning of the cycle, square one. "Stop," I demand. I'm allergic to something in the air. My breaths are becoming shorter and weaker while my demands turn into begs until the begs turn into silence.

I let him take me. I let him change me. I let him use me, abuse me, and break my heart. But I can't walk away.

"I wish I loved myself the way I love you."

I managed to whisper before he consumed the very last piece of my puzzle, and turned me into a replica of his now-defunct tangram.