I wear the words we didn't say. My heart is clothed in them every day.

I never needed a Man. I needed a Viking. I needed someone who wasn't afraid of my strengths, or of my needs. I chose wrong... in the past. I thought I had to find someone who could put up with my hunger for life. But I was so damn wrong. I needed a Viking. I needed someone who would admire all the things about me that tepid men were intimidated by.

And I find myself asking again and again.... What was it about such a beautiful man, who was able to leave such ugly scars?

I am vulnerability under scarred skin. Numbness crawling behind wine soaked lips. A cocoon of grief battling a chest full of hushed breaths, longing to escape the mod-podge of memories, that journal where I've been. Layer after layer they are sealed upon my person, encapsulating time in a vessel that has sailed one too many shores.

She'd been taking care of others for so long that she scarcely recognized herself when she looked in the mirror.

Like yourself, just as you are. Don't look at people and measure your self love by what they project in order to make themselves happy. Take a long look. You don't want their lives anyway. You don't like anything they do, say, or portray. Why then have you been so hard on yourself? You don't deserve to be treated that way.

It was in the words he didn't say... that I found all the answers to my questions.

Keep yourself as busy as you can. Try and forget. But even with 7 billion other distractions... you don't forget me.

I loved him... much more than I liked him. And therein was the beginning of the end.