2023, Summer
After completing her first year at the academy, she slowly started reclaiming parts of herself. Her education improved, returning to the level it had once been, and she gained a wealth of valuable knowledge. By the end of the year, she had become more open, especially to the girls who had tried to befriend her at the beginning. To her surprise, they turned out to be some of the sweetest people she had ever met. In a way, she had started moving forward.
What about relationships? Well, there were moments when some boys confessed their feelings to her, but she always politely turned them down. Strangely, every time someone mentioned love, her thoughts drifted back to him. She even tried to force herself to fall for someone else, but every guy she met seemed to fall short—she compared them all to him. Sometimes, when talking to another guy, she would catch herself pretending it was him sitting there instead. Loving someone else felt impossible. They just weren't him.
One day, after returning from the academy, she was listening to Enchanted by Taylor Swift. A thought crossed her mind—What if I saw him now? And as if the universe had heard her, she turned a corner and there he was. She froze in place, staring, just to make sure it was really him. And after he passed, she ran all the way house, her face lit up with the happiest smile.
After that, she started taking that same road every day, even if it made her way home longer—just for the chance of seeing him again. And sometimes, she did. It didn't happen often, but she remembered every single time. Just one glimpse of him was enough to fill her with happiness, the same feeling she once had in her favorite home.
But that summer, something happened—something she wasn't sure was good or bad. For years, her memories and mind had been almost shut down, perhaps out of fear. She was terrified that if she allowed herself to think about the past, she wouldn't survive it—that her memories would consume her. But that summer, she remembered. She let herself remember her childhood. She started watching old videos of herself as a child, revisiting every scar she had buried deep. She had been taught to hide her traumas and pain as quickly as possible, to never let them linger long enough to heal. And so, she never truly healed—she had only hidden the wounds.
But that summer, every wound was reopened. The pain was immense. She relived every memory, every emotion, not to hold on to them but to finally heal and let them go. For the first time, she let herself cry—really cry. She cried for months. She cried for the day she lost her world. It was a long, painful journey—but it was healing. She began to understand herself, to accept herself. She accepted her past. Rejecting her past had always felt like rejecting a part of herself. But she finally realized that every experience—both the good and the bad—had shaped her into who she was.
Before, she couldn't accept the light within her. Then, she couldn't accept her darkness. But in the end, she began to learn how to balance them both.
And then, she finally understood why she had never tried to approach him. It wasn't because she was shy—she had never been that type of girl. But he was her world, a part of her heart, and she was terrified that if she got too close, she would destroy that world.
Her first understanding of love and relationships came from her parents' marriage—anything but a good example. When it came to relationships between men and women, she felt lost. Her first experience with a man was with her father, and that was a painful journey.
She had never been the type to dream about a man. In fact, she even hated men at times—her pride wouldn't allow her to rely on them. But deep down, she had wanted to be loved by a man—by her father. Yet, his love brought her pain instead of warmth. She had wanted to be saved by a man, but no one ever came when she truly needed them. She had learned to handle everything on her own. Men only appeared when she had already survived the worst, and when they did, they only made things harder.
That's why she told herself: "It's better if I do everything on my own."