Slipping away (fiction)

You place your hand over mine but as soon as I sense it. I look down and pull away. 

Don't you see who I am by now? 

You still to this day, do not understand me.

What should I explain? 

That as I grew up and looked at the world with innocent bright eyes. I saw a world of murky shadows and a reason to constantly retreat?

I wanted to belong. I used to be so lovely, open and unguarded. I followed the wrong people, thinking it would lead me to somewhere illuminated and beautiful but it never did.

Look at my face. Look at my body. Do you see any evidence of bruising? No! Now look inside me and see if you can say the same thing?

You were smug enough to think you had me hooked but there are reinforced walls made of ice inside me.

You thought what? That we bonded? That I opened up to you? That you were different? 

I belong to nobody! I talked and you listened but you didn't hear me. You refused to acknowledge it. The fundamental truth.

I will always be free!

Why, you ask?

I close my eyes and smile. I feel at peace. I don't need you or anybody anymore. I used to think that I needed to be surrounded and that I should conform but not now.

I was delicate and fragile and the only thing that approached me was poison. Hurt and attacked and made to feel that I deserved it. 

Did you?

For what?? The crime of being me???!!!!!!

I get up from the bench, slide my headphones on and crank up the volume drowning your voice out. I follow the sun and it cures me.

I'm now unreachable.