25 Acts of Happiness | Law and Order SVU

Sequel Chapter Twenty Two | "Dear Past"

Dear Past,

It's funny, isn't it? The fine line between sanity and insanity. The fine line between reality and imagination. The feeling you get when you think someone is following you, but no one actually is? That's the voice in the back of your head telling you that. I see him sometimes. On the street, across my window staring at me with dead, unseeing eyes. The moment someone walks into my vision, when I blink, he's gone. It's like he wasn't there. Like he was never real, but it was. That fine line between reality and imagination tells you everything. It was real, because you saw him. It wasn't, because it wasn't actually there. That, is the thin line between sanity and insanity.

So, I'm writing this to you, because I want to apologise. I want to apologise because I was so weak. I want to apologise for letting this happen. I want to apologise for creating you this way. And now, I'm am sitting on my wooden chair, leaning over my breakfast table with a hot chocolate mug next to me. The scent of my shower gel dangling in the air, my wet hair falling into my face.

I sometimes wish to turn the time. You know? Just grab it by hand like a hourglass and turn it upside down, drain the dark memories like sand out of my mind to make space for better things.

But I can't. I can't turn the hourglass upside down and neither can I pretend nothing ever happened.

Because it did. Because of you.

Every man walking down the street, every innocent man earns suspicious looks from me because of you. Every man that looks at me is automatically a peadophile and I try so hard to overcome the thought, it bounces back into my life so unexpectedly but I can't help it. You are a constant reminder that Sam did really exist. And I can't help it.

So, I am writing this to you. And by doing that, I wish that the weight on my chest, that the dark sand in the back of my head can spill onto my paper and create words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Even stories.

There is a little frame standing in the little coffee table in my living room. A small, sweet frame with a picture. Me. You want to know what's so special about it? It's broken. There are huge cuts, stretching from one corner to another. Grabbing some others on the way, crossing other cuts and that, my friend, is something. Something beautiful, because it carries scars around. Battle scars. Scars, that never will heal, but that's okay.

Because those scars, were once wounds. Wounds with blood pouring from it. But time came around. Finally. And now they are gone. Just a few lines, that show how my past was, but that's okay. They are at least not bleeding.

And stating the obvious, I'm telling you this: you are unfair. Life is unfair. Pain is unfair.

You're like a tumour in the back of my head. No surgery, no therapy can get it out of my brain and you're killing me. Whispering triggering things into my happiest thoughts, making them turn grey. But I can make the tumor smaller, you know? Telling myself I will be alright. That I will be alright.

I made this box. This glass box with little cards in it. It has a blue ribbon on top of it. Then, a white card is dangling down from it that reads: Anti-Past.

I open it every day, after I wake up and drink my coffee and read the sentence. And I feel happy. It usually lasts throughout the day. Because now I am better.

I can do this and I will do this.

Sincerely,

Your friend, Amanda.