➸ AFTER THE STORM

CHAPTER I - THE STORM

"Time doesn't age you trauma does."

YEAR 2024

"The greater notion of foolish belief is believing that time will heal. I did once believe I could mend and fix myself over time, but all I got were sleepless nights and hot tears along with a bottle of wine with my name. All while he fucks his way through a city or town he lives in now. It's like he forgot all the shitty things he caused, he get's to have his slate wiped clean, and personally, I don't think that is fair at all. While I had to live in that place of heartbreak while he is free to live without consequence." Morgan expresses herself to the audience who have taken to listen to her words.

The words are more than personal between the four walls, but no one calls her out on it and the guy that shall not be named was never a saint even if she once tried to paint him as one.

The daydream was over and the blindness was no longer.

All the thing that they shared was something written on a draft that will never be published an overall pipe dream.

Morgan remembers writing once, "Trying to fix a person will be the hardest thing you ever do because it's a one in a million because sometimes people don't change; maybe they evolve, but no, they don't change. I guess old habits die hard."

She resonates with that more than she would ever know, She is no longer a modern-day Helen Keller to anyone's madness.

She remembers it all. it's like everyone had moved on but for some reason, her mind never got that message.

"So you don't love me anymore?" The ghost of his memory asked and Morgan didn't know how to answer because there was so much damage and hurt between them.

But some say time can heal along people can evolve, but honestly, Morgan doesn't believe that she has been hurt far too many times.

Her logic is a person can changed but it doesn't mean it was for the better. Along with the fact how can you still be in love with someone that you haven't seen in years? It is like being in love with the ghost of one memory.

So she settles to say, "It has been a long time, I don't know this version of you so I would say no." But she doesn't add about the chapter that they lived out together that was once sunshine and rainbows and marked with trauma and warning signs.

It happened in OCTOBER 2021 but after really a blur so let's start on January 8, 2022

M O R G A N - YEAR 2022

I don't understand why I'm like this where I feel alone.

But I'm told that I'm loved. Maybe no one heard me when I said I didn't feel the love it was like I was trapped where I couldn't get off, where no love could get it in.

I feel like I'm in the dark and hives are on my skin where it pops without much warning. It makes me ache and panic the hikes are shaped like a little bubble. It is truly an eyesore.

It makes me itch and scratch until I bleed with hope of relief. But sometimes it never comes.

I remember one time it did I thought that it was a fix or maybe a cure.

To the darkness and loneliness that I felt but with great emotions comes an extreme fall that doesn't feel like a fall at all.

Just a feeling of being buried alive and a dull ache that never seems to go away.

But at first, it did feel like I was being ripped open and exposed for anyone to see.

The feeling of tears running down my face where this void was trying to take me under where I would be nothing at all but a numb shell of what I used to be.

I recall how I let the confession leave my lips with a false sense of bravery. I would land on my feet like a cat like everyone around seemed to do. But the air was taken place by the silence that left a dread in the wake of the situation.

The look for the undo button was the first thing that came to mind. A lonely girl who desired to be seen to be loved was now broken like a teacup that would never be whole again. To make it worse he hides behind his falsity of morals and heroics, like he is better than me like it was all in my head.

He was marked and condemned as a murderous traitor that had not registered with my heart yet because I envisioned him. That he was better than everyone had made him out to be, that the potential I saw him in him was not greater Beyond his means.

When I think back it comes back, it come to me in vivid colors and shades almost like a scene in a movie where he treated me with such affection. But after such an event I hoped that we would of had a grand chance at being friends after such a tragic event.

2022

Morgan stood in the hall, she breathed in deeply the air blew from the air conditioner.

She felt a heavy weight against her arm along with the heat of a body, the younger teen turned her head to look at who was next to her.

There was Lore, his hair a little messy but overall perfect by her standards.

"Lore, what do you want?" She said trying to be irritated but her body language betrayed her even with a half-wounded heart she still thinks he hangs the moon and the stars.

"I want your friendship." He replies in a fake tone of seriousness but with the look in his eyes, say he wants to say more.

The way he looks at her, it's like they were the same like he had sees her in all of the darkness.

That seems to surround them for some reason and she thought maybe he was scared to want it in the end. But Morgan had never been scared to want things in her life and she sees him in return so she spoke in a way he will understand without saying words with such an audience present.

"You all right have it." Morgan knew what game he was playing so she decided to play along, her response was a show of her loyalty to follow him wherever he saw fit.

Morgan lets him know by her actions along with her words and her eyes they show how she adores him.

How she was willing ready to walk blindly to please him to no end, she would slit her wrist to please him if it came to that because, in the end, she is forever a servant that will cater to his every want and need, she never understand the crave that ache in her bones it was a familiar thing that had snuck up on her.

But she ignores all the other things that can be seen like how all she ever had stolen moments and double meanings with no real clarification.

"Oh well now I'm going to bother you from now on." He stated while looking her dead in her eyes and her heart does this weird funny little thing. It feels like butterflies.

She hopes she doesn't blush at his choice of words or give away too much.

"Okay do then." She responds and tries to not sound affected by him she doesn't know if she is successful.

Lore starts leading his weight onto her, that is when she takes both her hands and clans around his hip area.

She starts to apply pressure just to see a reaction. Lore reacts immediately to the pressure.

"Ow" His voice raises in volume and he looks at her with a shocked facial expression

"That's what happens when you want to bother me." Morgan told him when he started trying to escape.

She laughs at theatrics and her smile is bright even if it is almost 85 outside and there are more kids than adults she doesn't care because she has him in some way.