Your strength is inspiring, they said.

You always have it together, they said.

You have a gift for picking exactly the right words in any situation, they said.

But what happens when I'm weak, and I don't have it together, and I cannot find a single word in the English dictionary that will ever save us?

What happens then?

Because sometimes, you just have to accept things for what they are. Sometimes you just have to accept people for who they are, all of their faults, and downfalls, and limitations, and that can be truly devestating.

It's not the reality that kills me, it's the memories.

It's when I'm walking down a street in the middle of summer, and that scent of chlorine seeps into my nose, and I am brought back to when I was seven years old, and he would throw me in that cool, refreshing water, and I would splash him until he couldn't take it any longer, and it seemed as if the day really had sprouted wings, because that's when we learned that time really does fly when you're having fun.

But where did the time go?

It must have flown away, because it feels like that was only yesterday, but it was really a lifetime ago. It was long before he met her.

And none of us could have possibly predicted what would happen. Who would have thought that she would press that cold, hard pillow down on my family and laugh as she watched us struggle for air.

We were just pawns in her vicious game of deception.

She was a parasite, sucking the life out of my uncle, sucking the joy out of my family.

I watched her smile as she buried the uncle I once knew, because the man standing before me is a stranger. Is a coward. Isn't really a man at all.

He saw defeat, and he accepted it. He decided that we really weren't worth fighting for afterall.

A little while later, when my uncle was only a distant memory, I saw him again. He was talking to someone who I needed to see.

And when he and I crossed paths, I reluctantly drew closer.

And when he noticed my presense, he became paralyzed by silence.

He looked to the floor, and as he walked away from me, he had the audacity to say, "someone wants to talk to you"

That's it?

I don't even get a name?

He can't even look me in the eye?

I want him to know that that "someone" hurt far worse than any knife in the back every could.