Fractures
Maggie
Five Years Ago
Liam wasn’t there to see it—the aftermath of Dad leaving.
Not the way I was.
He had friends and he had hockey. And Mom had been too much for him, the same way she’d been too much for Dad.
That left me, feeling too guilty to leave her alone when everyone else already had.
So I’d been with her. To see her cry, watch her break, and listen to her call a phone number over and over and over again with the same depressing result.
She didn’t try to pretend with me. Not the way she did with Liam. Because I was a strong girl, she said. And someday I would have my heart broken too.
She said it was normal. A part of life. Something she would help me with when I was older.
But how could I trust her to help me with it when she was barely helping herself?
The more I saw of this supposed heartbreak she warned me of, the more I realized I could never let that happen. Not to me.
I didn’t want to be crying in my bed over someone who wasn’t there to dry my tears. I didn’t want to be so broken that I crumbled to the floor at the sight of someone’s shirt hanging in the closet.
But it would happen if I wasn’t careful.
Because that’s what boys did to girls who loved them too intensely. They left. They left because it was too much to be needed. Too much to be loved that much.
And even though I didn’t want to admit it, I was capable of loving just as messily and recklessly as my mother.
But that wasn’t safe. It wouldn’t protect me from the wreckage my mother was living in. And more than anything, I wanted to be the type of girl who didn’t crumble.
Like Liam. He had picked up and moved on. He never uttered our father’s name. He threw himself into sports. He excelled in school. He made new friends and stayed out late.
How was it so easy for him to move on when I felt frozen in the moment, still waiting for life to turn back to normal?
I wanted to be strong like Liam. I wanted to not hurt, the way he seemed to.
So, I hardened myself. It took time, but I did it.
The only way to do that was to never care at all. Never get used to someone’s presence being permanent.
I had friends, sure. A lot of them, even. But none of them mattered to me. Not really.
That was the secret: to only let people into my life whose presence I could bear to lose.
I had friends to shop with and people to talk about celebrity gossip with.
I even had a few classmates who would let me borrow their notes without a thought.
But I didn’t have any friends to tell my secrets to.
Certainly no one I trusted enough to do the whole sleepover thing with.
And when it came to boys? Well, I was lucky I learned that lesson early, before I could clumsily let myself get broken by them.
But the other girls? They didn’t know any better.
I watched it over and over again—my friends crying over boys who had already moved on to the next girl before the tears had dried.
Well, it wouldn’t be me.
No. I vowed. I wasn’t giving my heart to anyone without a fight.
I locked it up and kept the key tucked safely away from anyone who might try to snatch it out from under me.
Because I already knew what it felt like to love and be left anyway. And I didn’t like the way a heart felt when it bled.