Our Criminal Hearts

00. Prologue (Aaron's Diary Entry- Final High School Year-2015)

Dear Diary,

I love him.

Im ashamed. Im ashamed of loving someone like him. Im ashamed of how dirty and pathetic im feeling. Loving him is a mistake. Feeling the way I feel about him is a crime.

It shouldnt be allowed.

Diary, tell me, how can I love the very person that breaks me down day by day? How can i love the person that makes me feel like I dont matter. Like I was a mistake? Im ashamed.

But Diary I love him. You may call me sick and demented. Which it kind of is. Loving the thing that breaks you. But its love. I choose to see the good in him. The side that he chooses to hide from everyone. The side he's ashamed of. The side that I want to fall deeply inlove with. But how diary ? Give me an answer. Give me a solution. Anything.

When he shoots hateful words at me, I can hear the pieces of my heart shattering in my chest. The rustling of shards, carried between the walls of my heart. My heart is glass. A piece of art, handcrafted to be especially demolished by him. It was made for him diary. To break. To smash and destroy.

How do I tell him. How do I tell him that I have deep, dark galaxies within me? Craters that he creates in my chest day after day? He makes me feel empty. Day by day, he carves a deep hole within me. How can I love someone like that? Someone like him.

He doesnt see through me. He doesnt see the boy stabbing three fingers down his throat after supper, wrenching all the food down the deep toilet-pan. He doesnt see the boy lying flat on the cold, white hard floor with puke crusted around his mouth after every meal. He doesnt see the boy with the scars painted across his arms, so beautiful, so raw. So painful. He doesnt see the boy with tears in his eyes and splinters in his heart.

He doesnt see.

A thick layer of sadness coast his eyeballs. I see it. I see him. And Diary, I want to be there. I want to soothe him. Take it away. Do something. But I cant. Because I love him.

How do I love him? I cant love him. Thats blasphemy, right?. Telling him that even if the world told me he was a traitor, I would fight for him. A fire ignites within me. A sickening one at that. Am I wrong to love, diary?. Am I wrong in thinking that I'm capable of loving someone?

Sometimes my heart goes cold and my body goes numb. And I lie on my bed waiting for the darkness to caress me. To take all this pain filled heart away. Because truth is, I cant imagine my life without him. Whatever we are. Whoever we are. I need it to breathe. He's the oxygen that I breathe: How do I live without it?

You should see the way he looks at me diary. The way he holds my gaze as if I had the ability to prick him like a thorn. Like I was not human. Like I didnt belong. Like i put a bad taste in his mouth.

I could read those same eyes once. How they calculated. How they thought. That was before. When we were friends. Before he started dating Samantha. And when he spoke of her diary, he spoke of her as if she lived deep within the corners of his heart. As if she was the only one for him. As if her heart was too big for her body.

So pure. So innocent. So... loved.

And I didnt want to ruin that. I didnt want to fuck anything up for him. I didnt want to ruin his chance at happiness. I put myself before him because I respect him. Because I, I... love him.

These emotions swirling inside me, so strong, they sing to me. They sing me a song of love and loss and pain without gain. When I look at him diary, I see myself. I see the shattered pieces of myself within. As if he was the only thing in the entire world holding me together. The only thing that keeps me from falling.