She wakes with tears (which is the way she slept).

She washes them off.

She places on layer after layer.

Hiding bags, proof of sleepless nights.

She steps out the door, locking it behind her.

No one has seen the inside.

Inside her house, it's a mess.

Canvases and papers everywhere.

Paint on the floor, ink splattering the tables and easles.

Drawings of a face cover the paper.

While paintings of another coat canvas.

No one has seen this mess.

She likes it that way.

She smiles at every one.

No one would ever guess

Her heart was broken, then her mind.

One man stomped her heart.

The other, her sense of security.

So at night she paints him.

During the day she draws him.

Both men she sees everywhere.

Never letting people close.

Never letting them see.

Then

She invites a friend.

Hands her tea as she studies the walls.

Whispers she needs help.

They agree.

So the paintings, the papers, the art of months is piled in the front yard.

Together they pour gasoline.

Together they light it.

The smoke is carried off by the wind but scars still remain.

She doesn't wake up with tears anymore (though she still sometimes falls asleep with them).

She doesn't place layer after layer.

Now it's just one.

She doesn't have to work so hard to hide that she didn't sleep, because sometimes she did.

She locks the door still, but behind it are paintings of different things.

Things she finds beautiful, instead of sad.

Her friend admitted feelings.

She eventually gave them back.

Now together, they often paint.

Now she wakes up to a smile (which she falls asleep to).

Now she places hardly a layer.

She doesn't even have to try to hide.

Everything's already in the open.

She still locks the door.

Still paintings hang.

This time, something more precious still sleeps.

She who's dreaming of butterflies.

They gave me a choice, you know, when I died.

I guess I was important enough to have one.

Heaven or Hell?

The sane answer's Heaven, obviously, where you get happiness and eternalness and whatnot.

(I still can't believe "eternalness" is a word.)

So, in the beginning, I chose Heaven.

I was lavished in everything good and pure, and I enjoyed it.

For a while.

But there were rules. Of course there were rules. Otherwise why would they give us all the good stuff?

No women, only wine.

Everyone's equal under God, so no pride either.

Et cetera.

So one day, I fell.

Drinking my tea, the clouds opened up below me.

Alice fell down the rabbit hole.

Still calmly drinking my tea, I waved hello to the angels and the humans and soon enough, the demons too.

I worked my way up the ranks, sucked up to Satan, and pleased most everyone in one way or the other.

I wasn't Alice anymore, no.

I took down the prince because he wouldn't bend to my will.

Soon enough, I gained a new name and a new future.

Not Alice...

Malphas.

I madly drove down the highway, skillfully dodging other cars and screeching to a halt to cool down. The red and blue sirens wailed a few miles back as I gasped for air, which seemed like pure golden Heaven to my ailing lungs. The tires cooled down slowly as the sirens got nearer. Hopefully I'll be able to last a few more miles to the safe house, then everything will be alright. Right?

The sirens are so close I can feel the pounding sensation in my sensitive ears. I hop right back in my car and take off for Exit 41N.

I reach it and yank the wheel to the right.

Boom, turning point.

Fists felt heart deep,

Bruises to cover, afraid to sleep.

Blows cut like knives,

She feared for her life.

"It won't happen again, I love you" He said

As he held in his arms at night in bed.

He promised her once, a hundred times more,

It wasn't a relationship but a war.

Battle after battle, she never once won,

His abuse more powerful than a lethal gun.

Days to months, months to years,

Everyday there were more tears, more fear,

Until the day she chose to return to the earth

It breaks my heart she couldn't see her worth.

There I lay in a hospital bed, comfortably numb from the bottle of opiates I had taken early that morning. I was left alone with my thoughts. Left to myself. Exactly where I needed to be. Earlier I had desperately tried to get my husband to confirm his love for me.... And he refused ... So I thought that if I threatened to kill myself then maybe I could get to him say those words I desperately longed to hear. "I love you".

As it turns out, he didn't. So now I have to convince the hospital staff that I am sane, and that I am not a threat to myself or a danger to others.

I lay there thinking about my children. About myself.

Then the epiphany came.

I am worthy of love, but I can not force anyone to love me. And if they do not love me then they are not worthy of me. I am valuable. I have a lot to live for.

No person is ever worth my life or death.

She woke up. Drained and exhausted, she could barely pull herself up into a sitting position on her king-sized bed. A bed Joseph would never sleep in beside her again. This was a thought that occurred in her mind every morning, for the last 365 days.

She looked to her right on her bedside table and saw her half-eaten piece of pizza, now cold, from last night and took a swig of her now warm beer. She grimaced. What had happened last night? She knew she ordered pizza and had beer, watching Netflix to help prevent herself from stewing over the break-up...the break-up that was now officially 1 year old. Yet she still wasn't over it. Joseph haunted her. He was with her everyday in her mind, and he knew it. She rolled her eyes. Of COURSE he knew it. She'd email, text, or Facebook message him several times a week. He never responded. She was pathetic. She couldn't stop reaching out, hoping that one day he would come back to her, realize he loved her, couldn't live without her, yadda yadda blah blah blah all the things lovelorn hopeless romantics say. This was nothing unique, which troubled Natalie. She wanted to be special. She wanted this situation to be Natalie-specific. She didn't like knowing her experiences were shared, because if they were shared, she didn't have an excuse for not moving on. If she had some sort of "love disorder," let's call it, that she couldn't manage to get treated for, she could wallow in her self-pity without excuse.

She swung her legs across the side of the bed, after she finally managed to pull herself into a sitting position. She let her head fall in her hands and tugged at her shoulder length wavy brown hair. She hadn't brushed her teeth last night, and she felt disgusting. She remembered what happened last night now: she had ordered pizza and drank herself silly, but also danced around her apartment in her underwear and bra, hoping to dance away the pain. The buzz was enough to make her smile and feel temporarily happy as she danced, and danced, and danced. She couldn't stop. But when she awoke that morning with a mild hangover, she felt anything but happy. She did not want to become an alcoholic, but if that's what made her happy, hell...it was the only coping mechanism she had at this point. Drinking and dancing. What was so wrong with that?

It was just that she was alone. Joseph used to dance with her. He knew dancing made her happy. Minus the overabundance of alcohol. But what was curious was that during the last month or so of their dating, he would slowly sneak in a glass of wine, or a beer, or something to make their time more fun.

Maybe that was it. She was imagining Joseph in her arms, and with the alcohol in her system, she didn't know the difference: the fact that he wasn't there.

Suddenly she dropped to her knees. On a hardwood floor, no less. A sharp pain made its way up her legs. She didn't care. It had hit her:

Joseph knew. He had predicted. He had known way before her that he would do this. That he would leave. Sure, she loved dancing, but the alcohol. Why had he started introducing alcohol into their dancing routines?

Had he predicted that dancing alone would not be enough, and that with alcohol Natalie could pretend that Joseph still was with her in her mind?

Was this grace on his part? Or cruelty? Was it closure, or an ever-open wound that would never go away?

Did he intentionally give her a coping mechanism?

To forget Joseph, she'd have to stop dancing AND drinking.

Cruelty, she decided.

"Goddammit," she said out loud, tears brimming at the edges of her eyes. She fell into a fetal position on her floor, hugging her knees to her chest, bawling and sobbing incoherently. She began to scream with no one to hear her. And that was okay, she didn't want anyone to. This was the beginning of her healing.

Over and over again, she screamed, "Fuck you, Joseph! Fuck you! Fuck you, Joseph! Fuck you!" It was almost like a mantra. She had to yell it time and time again until her voice collapsed and grew hoarse and she simply rocked back and forth on her hardwood floor and eventually fell asleep, in a fetal position with the warm beer spilled all around her.

She woke up sticky and wet from the beer. It was almost like she bled it out of her system. How metaphorical, she thought.

All beer after last night would taste different after this sudden revelation.

Suddenly, and even surprising to her, she smiled. It was over. She had figured out the puzzle. Joseph was both gracious and cruel in his own way, but he had nothing to do with her healing. That was up to her. He did the best he could, but from now on, she had to take control of her life. She had to own her behavior. She could fucking dance if she wanted to.

She got up, threw the old pizza and beer away. And danced.