...

and it's weird, because even seven years later i have this desire, this borderline compulsion, to explain to the people i left what happened to me, as if somehow telling them now would redeem the aloneness that i felt so deeply...but at the same time i have this fear that if anyone from there catches wind of this, they wouldn't believe me....
i know it to be true. i lived it. i struggled to face each day. i gasped for hope. i survived.