All We've Ever Known

“Macy!” I shouted, sprinting across the lawn. Her car was already beginning to pull away, and I knew I wouldn’t make it there in time.

I had heard Kara shouting her name as I was making my way down the hall with Lisa in tow. I had immediately stopped short and told Lisa that I’d be right back, that I had forgotten my phone and wallet in the living room and was scared it would get stolen or ruined or some poor, pathetic excuse.

“Kara, where is she going?” I demanded, extremely out of breath.

Kara whirled around and said, “She’s going home! Where do you think she’s going?”

“Why?! Why is she going home?” I asked frantically, peering down the road, secretly hoping she would come back.

“I think it’s pretty obvious,” she replied, looking completely unimpressed. “Why would you personally invite her to a party and then not even speak to her once - not even to say ‘hello’? Not to mention the way you led Lisa away right in front of her. It was just too much for her.”

I sighed and dropped to the ground, laying on the grass and looking up at the sky. The cold wind batted at my face, my cheeks slowly becoming chapped. How could I have been so stupid?

“Kara, is she going to be okay?” I whispered. I looked over and saw her shrug as she sat beside me.

“I don’t know. She’ll hurt for a little while, but she’ll be okay.”

“How’s she been doing? In general, I mean?”

Kara shook her head and replied, “This trip hasn’t been good for her. She had gone a while without cutting and just recently relapsed a bit. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be, though…”

Memories of sixth grade flooded my mind. The time I had first found out about her cutting, we were both twelve. She was innocent about it, acted as if she didn’t think there was anything inherently wrong with it, but we both knew that she was deep in the mess of her mind and that was the only way to help cope. They were small cuts at first, but as the years wore on, they became deeper and deeper. By the time we broke up, she cut daily – deep, hardly-bleeding cuts that needed medical attention, but she never went to the hospital.

“What do they look like now?” I asked, tracing the bright stars in the sky.

“Bad. Her arms are all torn up and ragged now… But… They don’t really seem to bother her. I mean, they don’t hold her back… It’s strange.”

I smiled in relief, remembering the time she talked about her newly-formed scars. She told me that she was so ashamed of them. She would constantly hide them to the best of her ability, just so people wouldn’t look at her the way they did – with that pitying glance she hated so much. It made me feel slightly better that she was accepting them.

“She’s trying, Alex…” Kara whispered, “but sometimes I feel like she’ll never be… ‘Macy’ again. That part of her has been long gone, and I’m sure it’ll never come back…”

My heart ached at Kara’s words, mainly because I knew I was a part of that. I left her at a time when she needed me most, and I held myself eternally accountable for that.

She kissed my neck and jawline, sending shivers down my spine. We were huddled outside of the local club we got into with fake IDs, both of us drunk. She was definitely shitfaced – alcohol mixed with hard drugs wasn’t ever a good mixture – but I was just slightly inebriated. She continued to kiss me down my neck and knelt down, a sly smile tugging at her lips.

I leaned my head against the brick wall of the building as she unzipped my pants. It all seemed so wrong to me. We never did things this risky, this… Filthy. And I actually didn’t like it at all. As she attempted to pleasure me, all I could think about was how messed up our relationship had gotten.

Macy had always been the reliable one you could always count on. She’d comfort you even when all of your problems seemed incapable of comforting. Even she herself had problems immensely larger than any of mine, any of anyone we knew, actually. She was miserable and full of self-loathing, and had been ever since the start of high school, maybe even before that. But now… Now it had gotten ridiculous.

She had also always been a classier girl – always sure that no one knew about our sex life, since sex to her was an extremely private and personal thing. Over the past year though, it seemed those morals were slowly diminishing, replaced by a ravenous need for sex whenever she felt that longing. She was beginning to lose all that she was, and I hated seeing her like that.

She was drunk as anything and high as a kite, high off of a drug that I was terrified to even say out loud, and she was gladly shooting it into her veins with a needle. I shuddered as she kissed my stomach and I suddenly felt nauseous. I pushed her away and buttoned my jeans up, resting a hand on the wall to steady myself.

“What?!” she said, clearly offended.

“What are you fucking doing, Macy? Since when do you do things like this?” I said, looking at the ground.

“What are you talking about?” she asked defensively.

“This!” I shouted, motioning around me. “This isn’t you! This never was you, and never will be! Why are you doing this to yourself?! Everything you’ve been doing is ridiculous and off the wall. This isn’t the Macy I used to know…”

There was a pause before she replied through gritted teeth, “That Macy left a long time ago. I don’t even know who she is anymore.”

“Then I can’t fucking do this anymore. I can’t watch you become a monster and ruin all of the amazing traits that made me fall in love with you.”

She stared at me, unable to say anything. I knew I had struck a chord, and tears seemed to pool in her eyes, something she never did. Macy never cried, and if she did, it meant she was broken beyond belief. I instantly regretted my words, but I couldn’t turn back now.

“Are you serious?” she whispered, her eyebrows furrowing. I nodded.

“Mace… I can’t see you like this anymore. I don’t love this Macy, I loved the old Macy…”

She stared at me for a couple more seconds before swiftly turning on her heels and running away, never to be seen again. If I had known she would never, ever come back, I would’ve run after her, but my seventeen-year-old mind refused to believe that that was truly the end. We just needed a break…

But that wasn’t the case - I never saw her again.

“It’s my fault…” I whispered, feeling tears prick my eyes.

“No…” Kara said soothingly, stroking my arm. “It isn’t your fault… What really messed her up came after you.”

“What happened to her, Kara?” I asked, squeezing my eyes shut.

Kara sighed before saying, “She got into a horrible relationship almost directly after you broke up with her. It was almost like she refused to believe it happened and just wanted to move on as quickly as possible… He was a much older guy… Around 23, maybe… She got her meth for free from him just so long as she agreed to have sex with him whenever he wanted. She ended up moving in with him almost a month after their… ‘Relationship’, if you can even call it that, began.”

My stomach churned at the thought of Macy selling herself for drugs. Since when was she capable of stooping so low?

“Then what?” I said, almost as if I was watching a suspenseful movie.

“Well, I mean, he obviously abused the hell out of her. She was vulnerable and in need of something he had, so he took advantage of that.”

By now I really wanted to throw up. Just the thought of someone touching Macy like that made me want to punch a hole in the wall.

“Where… Did she get those scars? On her face?” I asked, motioning to the regions where the deep lines resided on her skin.

Kara sighed and replied, “Alex, you’d have to ask her that. I don’t really feel comfortable telling you all of this. Just know that she’s better and working on a better life, okay?”

I nodded solemnly, not wanting to stop the conversation. I really wanted to know how she got the scars, and no one was telling me. I decided to try a different question, but I was already sure Kara wouldn’t tell me.

“I once heard that she… Tried to kill herself? After we broke up? Is that true?” I asked, biting my bottom lip.

She nodded and said, “Yeah…”

“Why?”

“Again, something that you should ask her… But it wasn’t because of you breaking up with her, if that was what you were wondering…”

That was what I was wondering… Ever since I had heard it, I constantly worried that I had caused the suicidal thoughts, something I constantly feared since my brother’s death.

“Kara… I miss her,” I whispered.

“I know,” she answered, looking me right in the eyes. “But you need to let her go.”