You are six when it whispers the first time. 

“I see you. I see you reading alone. Would you like me to sit with you?” It asks. 

“What is your name, are you my friend?” You say. 

“I am it. Don’t you know me?”

“No?”

“Your mother knew me? Your father too?”

“They never told me about you?”

“That’s good,” it says. “I will be your friend… forever.”

It stayed with you that night, but the next day it had left. It didn’t come back that afternoon, It didn’t come back that week. The next time you felt alone, it came as though to a sirens song. “Did you miss me?”

It felt dangerous and secret. It made you feel special. You felt like you had a reason for it all now. A reason to be bad, a reason to be angry or hurt. You had a reason to be weird, and a reason why the other kids didn’t get you. 

This was wonderful, you thought. 

“Why are you alone?” it asked. 

“You know why I’m alone,” you laughed.

It was there with you most of the time now. It knew all of you, your best moments and your worst. It loved you regardless, it would never leave you. 

“Why are you the only one alone? What’s wrong with you?”

“Wrong?” It had never occurred to you that there was something wrong. 

“I… I don’t know?” 

“Seems strange is all.”

It was right. That was strange? You’d never thought about how strange it was. 

It’s okay, you’d think. Being strange is just… unique. Who wants to be like all the others anyway? You’d hold your head up high and be proud to be odd. That is what you’d do. 

“They’re looking at you.” It whispered. 

“That’s okay, they like me- even weird they like me!” You would wear it like a badge. 

“Maybe. But are you the right kind of weird?”

Your chest was a bit less puffed out than before. Sure… Sure you are...you're the the right kind… right? 

“Maybe just… pretend… just a little.” It would say. 

You were 16 today.

“You think they forgot?” It whispered. 

“No, they’re just busy.”

“No one is busy, they just don’t want you.” It bit out. 

“It’s ok. They don’t have to want me today.” 

“I want you today. I want you everyday," it romanced. 

That was how the years would pass, with whispers of doubt. Not complete but…. Just … enough. The whispers sometimes felt too loud. No one else could hear, you knew they were just whispers but they felt so loud compared to the rest of the words you heard. 

It was always there, reliable company. Better the evil you know, you’d think. 

Because it was always there. 

And the years would pass. 

“I’m sorry.” I say, flatly.  

“Stop! Stop saying you’re sorry like it’s done. Stop saying you’re sorry like you’re not even going to try!” 

I have tried. He didn’t see that. I’ve tried for so long, way too long. Time is up, it is here again. 

I reach for his hand to say, “I love you.” He won’t let me touch him though. My hand instead, whispers- “I wanted to love you forever.” 

“You can’t sit there and calmly tell me that it’s over, that you love me and you are sorry and it’s over. You can’t do that. Then think I’m just going to roll over and say, ‘sure thing. Thanks for the ten years, sorry it didn’t work out, I love you too.’

You can't think I’ll walk away from this peacefully.”

He’s acting like I want this. Like this was ever a fucking choice. 

“Is there anything I can say to make this easier for you?”

“You can stop trying to make it easier! I don’t want it to be easy. Where is your fight? Where is the girl who would crush anything that came in her way?”

I shook my head. He has no idea. “I just wanted to be okay.”

“So be okay!”

“There is no Okay. That’s not in the cards for me.” 

He sits down with his knees touching mine, holding my hands in his. They’re soft, gentle. I can feel the love thrumming through them with each pulse of his heart.

This is how I saw it, this is the thing that makes it so obvious to me. How can he not feel that? I should feel connected to him- more now than ever, but no. I am just as broken off, like a splinter that fell from the girl I used to be. 

“Look at me…”

“It won’t change anything if I do.”

“Prove it.”

Shoes, knees, lap…. Higher and higher my eyes raise, memorizing him. Hands in mine, forearms, shirt, chest… that beating heart pumping inside. Neck, jaw, lips… beautiful lying lips. 

Then his eyes are there, looking into mine. I worried I would be wrong. I worried that he would look at me and I would crumble. 

But I don’t. It was right. I do not crumble, I do not fall and my heart doesn’t break. It told me I would be ok. 

“I love you.” 

“I know you do.” I told him. 

“But it doesn’t matter?”

“Not enough.”

“How can it go from being everything to being not enough?”

I don’t make the rules, I think. “Everything changes.” I shrug.

“You love me?”

“I do,” I nod. 

“But that’s not enough either? I can love you, and you can love me and we can still not be enough?”

It doesn’t care about that. It’s not me choosing this path. It chooses everything. It’s been choosing everything for months now. He deserves to understand, I want to break through enough to tell him.

“Pretend there is a monster,” I say. “Pretend it is made of shadows. It has followed you since you were a child. When you were lonely it was your friend. But it is a an envious friend. It won’t stand by idly when you find a new one. It will tell you all the ways your new friends hate you, and it will make sure you know everything you’ve done that has annoyed them, everything you have worried about- it saw it all. It will tell you what you’ve missed, everything you’ve messed up.

But you get older, and that envious friend starts to win more. It tells you how you will fail, before you even try. It tells you how you look, before you even dress. It sees everything, and there is no pleasing it anymore. It see’s all of your dirtiest thoughts, all your intrusive thoughts, even in your dreams- it is there waiting.”

I’m glad he doesn’t interrupt me, I think.

“Then one day you grow up, and you fall in love. For a while it seems like it stays away and that just makes the love feel more powerful. This, you think, this is the light I needed to banish the dark! So you live and you love and you think it’s all going to be so amazing. Until one night, one normal tiny fight or a small slip and you see that shadow of a friend you’d only thought you’d been without for so long.”

 I stand, my heart pounding. You don’t talk about the shadow- it talks about you. You don’t talk about the damage it’s done, it talks and you listen… you’ve broken all the rules now. 

“It see’s what you’ve done- even to this person you claim to love so much. It reminds you of all the way you've ruined life for that person. How can you claim to love them so much, but you sit here year after year- ruining their life?”

“I never wanted to ruin you.” I say to him, my Paladin. “I never meant for you to love me enough to follow It into the dark.”

“I would follow you into the depths of hell-” he says “-to drag you away from the dark.” 

“There is no ‘away’. It is my shadow. I cannot live without it living too.”

“If you take my hand…” he says, “Take my hand and I will lend you the light.”

“It is too much, it is too strong. It will find you too!” You say, panic rising in your veins. “My mother knew it,” You tell him. “My father too.”

“You have dark.” He says. “But I have fire.” 

Take my hand, It whispers. 

“You have dark, but I have fire. You know my fire can burn, and I know your dark can suffocate, but I will illuminate your dark with my light, if you will temper my fire with your calm.”

Two hands reach out, willing you to write their happy ending.

“I choose you.”