Page 57 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

Whenyougrowupin a broken home, with broken people, you think that the real world that’s out there will fix you, but that isn’t true. It will make you worse. And I kept coming back to the memories—where did I go wrong? And then I lowered my head down, seeing him closing his eyes, sleeping on my chest.

And a tear falls down.

It’s not the kind that burns or demands to be noticed—it’s the quiet kind. The kind that slips out like a secret you didn’t mean to tell.

He looked peaceful. Too peaceful. Like someone who didn’t know he had wreckage stitched into every part of him. Or maybe he did, and this was just the eye of the storm—his moment of rest before becoming a hurricane again.

I held my breath, afraid that even the sound of it might wake the version of him I didn’t know how to handle. The one that made me feel like love was a game I never learned the rules to.

People say the heart knows. But mine? Mine was confused, bruised, and too loyal for its own good.

Maybe that’s what love was for people like us—damaged and desperate. A battlefield where even silence feels violent. A kind of hope that looks too much like hurt.

And still… I stayed.

And still… he rested.

Not knowing he was the reason I no longer recognized myself.

People romanticize broken souls like we’re just waiting for someone to love us right.

But when two broken people find each other, it doesn’t heal anything.

It just teaches you how to bleed in sync.

He was cracked, yes. But I was already shattered.

He screamed with his fists; I screamed with silence.

He broke things around him. I broke myself.

And somehow, we still called it love.

We were never a home. We were a war zone dressed in soft words and false promises.

He’d say, “I didn’t mean it,” and I’d nod like it made the bruise fade faster.

I’d say, “I’m fine,” while pressing a towel to my own wounds—some visible, some not.

But there’s no exit sign in relationships like ours.

You don’t run. Youdrift.

You sink slowly beneath the surface, and before you realize it, you’re drowning in everything you swore you’d never allow.

I used to draw lines on my skin when the noise inside got too loud.

Not because I wanted to die—

But because pain made things quiet.

Pain was something I could control.

He never noticed.

Or maybe he did and just couldn’t care through his own chaos.

Some nights, I’d sit on the bathroom floor, listening to him sleep like the world wasn’t crumbling around us.

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