One of the hardest places to be is remembered in a place you wish to be forgotten. Stuck in a town that remembers you for all the wrong reasons. Just plain stuck!

They still see me as that girl. They don’t care to know me now; they take too much pleasure in then. They take too much pleasure in the memories, and I can’t change that. It’s strange how a town can shrink around you, how rooms where you should be loved you find yourself merely tolerated. People say it’s in my head. I nod in that quiet way that is tired of arguing. I nod because I know they will never really get it. You have to be that girl to get it. I came back here stupid. Maybe that’s my fault for thinking time would change things. It’s my fault for thinking I would be anything but that girl.

The corner gas station smells the same as it did when I was a teenager, burnt coffee, cherry slushies and cigarettes. The sign for the pizza place is still faded and hanging by a single screw; I still don’t know how the wind hasn’t brought it down. There is more traffic than I remember, but everything else is the same. The town, the people, the drama, the gossip. I don’t know why I came back, but I did. I thought I was different, but in this town I feel the same.

Maybe I am.

I thought time would sand the edges off this place, dull the sting. It hasn’t. I still hold my breath in grocery stores, my hair hanging in my face as I move quickly. It almost feels like the story they tell of me has grown sharper, more certain, more cruel, or maybe I just understand better now how broken I was then. Maybe I can see more clearly how cruel the things that broke me really were. I avoid going into the town as much as I can. Sometimes I drive an hour away just to shop in peace. I wanted to come back. I wanted it to be different. I wanted time to heal wounds that can’t be healed and now I regret even trying.

Outside, the sky hangs low and gray, heavy with rain that hasn’t yet fallen, grass dry and threatening from a drought. All I can think about is running again. I came back here hoping to be the one thing I craved… missed, only to find the silence deafening.

I want so badly to be something that cannot be whispered away and forgotten.

Now I’m back where it started, standing under a sky swollen with rain, waiting for it to break. My chest feels the same way, ready to split, ready to let it out, but holding on, holding everything in. But more than anything, I feel ready to run for good.