Dearest Reader
Edgar Allan Poe once confessed in a letter to his beloved aunt:
“I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
I thought of that line often. I clung to it, really—like a ribbon between my trembling fingers, fraying more with each passing day.
Because I did love him.
I still love Sylum.
Even in those hours when I was all but certain he meant to unravel me—slowly, sweetly, the way one might tease a ribbon loose from a bodice.
There were moments—terrible, blissful moments—when I saw him not as the villain of my story, but as the man I married.
The man whom I had loved with my whole heart since I was nineteen.
The man who had kissed my temple when I confessed I feared I’d never be anything but strange and alone.
The man who brushed the hair from my brow with such gentleness that I could almost forget the things I’d seen.
Almost.
In those brief, unbearable spells of sanity, I saw him clearly.
He was a man torn. A man in love. A man who might very well have been protecting me from something worse than madness.
You must understand, there were nights I doubted everything, even myself. Nights when I feared my mother’s fate was threaded into my very blood. When I wondered if I had stitched fantasy to memory, grief to imagination—until no seam remained between them.
What you are about to read may confirm all your worst suspicions about me.
You may decide, quite reasonably, that I am beyond saving. That I am a woman possessed. A woman haunted.
But before you cast judgment…
Remember, Mr. Poe also said:
“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did—and let me love you anyway.”
—L