De BEFORE AND AFTER

So it is very weird that people stare at you. They are even more aware than you. Its the first day you are back, the first party you go to, the first drink they see you have, and the first time they see you as a single, not a couple. Sometimes people don't mean to stare, they always do anyway. Thank god you are with your new friend, who is really an old friend who moved back after what happened and who's smart enough to never bring it up or your new status because he has been through a similar situation. He makes everything feel new, even if it truly is the same old shit.

As the night progresses and you get a few more drinks in you start to relax, you start to ignore how many people have come up to talk to you that would have never before. You start socializing more with people who you disliked before and had nothing in common with. Were all on the same boat, yet I am drowning all by myself.

The truth is you need a new crowd. You need to move from where you are (which is a block away from where you lived before). You crave affection from a person who belongs to the after part of this fucked up life whom you can use up and discard without having to explain what before was. So what if your tattoos are daily reminders of before? You got them after, and their only yours, not his, not anyone else’s.

After is when you've realized that you are mad. Furious. Enraged. This motivates you. This makes you want to have a body that agrees with the after part of your life. After is when you look the opposite from the way you feel. Just to confuse them, just to let them know that you are stronger than you look and at the same time totally more destroyed than they know. They will never know. Only you feel it. Only you have witnessed it. This is what is so lonely, only you know how it feels, losing that which you fear the most.