blurred lines in a forbidden fairytale

{32} you drew stars around my scars but now I'm bleeding

Aurora's POV:

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May 4th 2009

I held her.

For a single, impossible moment, I held her. And in that tiny moment, everything I thought I knew shattered. She was so small, so warm, so real. I had spent these past months trying to keep my heart locked away, telling myself I could do this, that it was for the best. But holding her—feeling the weight of her in my arms, looking down at that perfect little face—my whole heart unraveled.

She has the softest cheeks, tiny fingers that curled right around mine. Her eyes opened for a moment, unfocused and sleepy, and she looked at me as if she knew me. As if, for one brief heartbeat, I was her whole world. I even gave her a name: Felicia Alison Swift

I told myself I wouldn't get attached, that I would stay strong. But how can I explain the feeling of holding a piece of myself? A piece of someone who was almost mine. It doesn't feel real. It feels like a beautiful, terrible dream that I can't wake up from.

I don't know if I'll ever see her again. The adoption papers are signed, and the agency assured me she'll be going to a family who's been waiting a long time for her. They'll love her, give her a life I know I never could. I just hope she knows someday that this was my choice because I loved her too much to hold her back.

But right now, as I sit here alone, the emptiness is swallowing me whole. I'm already mourning someone I barely got to know.

Goodbye, my little girl. I hope you grow up strong and happy. I hope you never have to know the pain of saying goodbye to someone you love.
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My hands tremble as I turn to the last entry, dated just yesterday. The realization hits me like a punch in the chest: Taylor has been carrying this secret, this anguish, all by herself, all these years.

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March 23rd 2017 (yesterday)

Everything feels like it's slipping through my fingers again. The mess I'm in with Aurora, the accusations, the looks, the whispers, the suspension—I feel like I'm drowning, and all I can think about is her. My daughter. The tiny life I created and then chose to give away.

It's been eight years since I let her go, but these past few weeks, the guilt is everywhere. It's like a wound that I thought had scarred over but has suddenly split open, and it's bleeding again. I can feel it every time I close my eyes, every time I try to sleep and end up staring into the dark, haunted by the same questions that used to keep me up every night.

Did I make the right choice? Did I throw away a part of me I'll never get back? And for what? So that I could go on pretending I was okay, living a life that now feels so hollow I don't even recognize myself in it?

Aurora doesn't know. She knows my struggles, my pain, but this is different. This is a ghost I buried so deep even I pretended it didn't exist. She doesn't know that every time I look at her, I feel the weight of that same impossible decision—that choice to let go of something I loved more than life itself because I thought it was the right thing to do.

But was it? Or was it just a coward's escape? I can't tell anymore. The guilt, the memories, they're suffocating me. I've built my whole life on hiding from this, but it's always there, lurking, waiting to tear me apart again when I'm weakest.

And now with everything else falling apart, I wonder if I deserve any happiness at all. Maybe this is my punishment. Maybe I was never meant to find peace, or love, or anything close to freedom from this grief. Because how could I deserve any of that when I abandoned her?