The Way I Used To Be Novels & Stories

Taunted, used and emotionally abused? Fuck, that was a goddamn rollercoaster I put up with but not anymore, I've had a taste of freedom. A taste of power, and my God it tasted like heaven, or was utter bliss and I'm not going back to the old me again. I don't know what I was thinking but this version of me is better, it's the real me, descended and headed to hell. “How is –”

"Look, Sydney. I've made sure your room is exactly the way it used to be. I also tracked down all your belongings and returned them to their original places. Do you like this surprise?" It had been so long since I last stepped foot here that everything felt familiar, yet unrecognizable at the same time. This was the same way I felt toward Zach. I shook my head and replied, "What's the point? It means nothing anymore. Even if you try to recreate our past, we will never return to the way things were."

I’ve washed it a hundred times, worn it to bed when no one’s watching, told myself it’s just comfortable cotton and not a relic of who I used to be. --- P.P.S. Track 43: “Come Back.” He did. I just don’t know what to do with him now that he’s here.

But I knew this— Whoever I used to be had loved these people. And somehow… that felt like a place to start. ***

"Remember who I am—the man you once loved passionately. You used to be love me so much, and I yearn to rekindle that fire within you." "The person I used to be is a relic of the past, Jasper ," I asserted firmly. "That miserable, fearful, and discontented woman you were once married to has vanished for good. I've rebuilt my life and forged a new path for myself and my children. I refuse to allow you to snatch that away from me—never again!"

They remembered how I used to talk about him endlessly, how I used to blush whenever his name came up, how obsessed I was with him. Used to. Should I be saying used to instead? Because the way I felt now… the way my chest stayed hollow whenever I looked at him, it wasn’t the same. Still, I told myself it would come back. It had to. I just had to be patient. I had to believe. Love didn’t just disappear, right? It comes back if you fight for it. That’s what I kept telling myself every morning when I woke up next to silence, every night when I tried to pray my heart back into shape.

And I wasn’t the same naive girl anymore. ********

I finally made my peace with the person I used to be, whispered comfort to that girl who'd once lost her dignity, and didn't look back. Because the life that belonged to me was only just beginning.

I can't smell him the way I could before. Nothing is the way it was before.

____ . . . ○ ○ ○ J A C K S O N ○ ○ ○ . I was never one to pretend that I was a good guy. In fact, there was a time when I used to be proud of the fact that I was a piece of shit who would go to any extent to get what I wanted. But, I guess those days were over.