Our Story

Prologue

It's sad, isn't it? That someone can hurt you so much you have to write about it.

But I have to write about it, because all my "friends" who say that they're always there for me if I need to talk, never answer their phones.
Because my family are too caught up in their own lives to care.
Because the only one who's there is the one I can't talk to, because she's his
cousin. I have to write it because ever since he left I've had this emptiness inside, like if I stop distracting myself for a second then the hurt and loneliness will come back.

I can distract myself during the day. Smile, laugh.
And it convinces everyone too. But the truth is I'm falling apart, breaking.
It's the night that scares me. Getting home, acting like everything's okay in front of my family, until I go to bed.
At 3am lying in the dark staring at the ceiling when everyone else is sleeping, completely alone.
That's when it really starts to hurt.
That's when it starts to feel like there's a huge weight on my chest, breaking my ribs and restricting the air getting to my lungs.
That's when it hurts to breathe.

Max.

1 word, 3 letters yet it's my favourite and least favourite word in the world. It's the only word in the world that has the power to break me apart.

Maximilian Lorenzo Bradley.

I wish I could hate him, but I can't. I just miss him.
More than anything.
And I want him to come back.
Have you ever had an asthma attack? When you're breathing in and out but no air is getting to your lungs? All you can think or care about is getting some air. You don't care who's around you, you don't care about your homework, or what's on TV, all you want to do when you're trying to breathe is get some fresh air. Right?
Well, what happens when you want something so bad, you want it more than you want to breathe?
I wanted him more than I wanted to breathe.
More than I wanted air.
And now that he's gone, I'm drowning.
Suffocating.
And no one can see me struggle.

They say you don't know what you have until it's gone, but the fact is you knew exactly what had, you just thought you'd never lose it.
A thousand moments with you that I took for granted, but only because I thought there would be a thousand more.

It's funny, cause you think to yourself 'Okay, I get it. I'm prepared for the worst.' But you still hold onto that small hope and that's what kills you, that's what fucks you up.

So you put up walls. Not to keep people out but to see who cares enough to break them down and then when they do you push them away anyway because they aren't him, you push everyone away because they aren't him and you think that you want to disappear but all you really want is to be found.

I loved max.

I still do.

I let him become my happiness, and that's where I went wrong.

Even if he called 6 months later at 2am, I'd still answer, because I'm the type of girl that can be so hurt but can still look at him and smile because he is my happiness.
My air.
My mum used to say that sometimes holding on does my damage than letting go, but all I know is that everything in my life feels wrong and you were the only thing that felt right, and without the moon, the sky is infinitely darker, and the stars are swallowed up by the dark. Tragically beautiful, a graveyard of stars.

Giving up on him took everything I had.
And now I don't know how much I have left, and that scares me too.
I've reached a point where I feel too much, or nothing at all.

And I don't know which is worse.