ONE

Hey, girl, you know you drive me crazy

          one look puts the rhythm in my hand.

          Still I'll never understand why you hang around

          I see what's going down. 

I see her walking in, her hoodie up and parts of her light brown hair falling over her chest. Her eyes are on the floor, avoiding all eye contact. She hugs herself and I sigh, stopping playing my guitar even though we're in the middle of rehearsing. She's always like that; she always walks in as if she's scared of the world. I know why, I do know why she's like that and it fills me with rage.

But then she looks up and meets my eyes immediately, her fear-filled ones lock with my frustrated ones and she smiles at me as she usually does. I'm smile back, ready to play again because that's all I need: one look. She walks past everyone else to the lockers in the bar and I lose sight of her.

I have a band, Iridescent, and we play every night at this bar she works in, Chimera. I met her here when I couldn't stop wondering what was the deal behind the girl who never talked to anyone nor met someone's gaze. The girl who was only polite yet completely asocial. With every day I grew more and more confused, and more obsessed to find out what she was hiding. It took me five months to finally get her to talk to me but it took me two weeks to find out why she was acting like that.

Her boyfriend.

He's this dark boy, the typical bad, troubled guy you see in movies that's too damaged to love yet he somehow fools a girl to be with him and he's too selfish to let her go and look for a better life. He's the one who snaps and hits whoever looks at her. He's the one who grabs her roughly and drags her out of the bar if she meets some guy's eyes. He's the one ruining her and she doesn't escape.

I don't get it. Why? Why does she hang around him when he's like that? When she has so much light inside. I see it in her smile, when she's really happy. I make her happy. I make her laugh.

I've become her only friend, but her secret friend. I'm never around when her boyfriend comes because she doesn't want me to get hurt. But I burn inside with the need to take her away from him, to save her. She deserves so much better, she deserves someone who lets her be not someone who tries to control her or who can't help react like a caveman.

I care about her and I would never treat her like that. Isolating her from the rest of the world is not love. Dragging her into a world in which she's afraid of someone else getting hurt is not love. He doesn't really love her, she's a possession for him and he doesn't want to share.

She's trapped in an abusive relationship and I can't convince her to run away.

"He loves me," she says all the time when I bring up the topic. "You don't understand. He's a good guy inside. He's just too broken and I can't leave him," she always adds and I give up. "I can fix him."

Love is not enough to fix someone like him. Not even therapy, I think.

Why? Why can't she see she'd be better off with me? That I would let her be who she really is? That I would never clip her wings? Why can't she see that she drives me crazy and I would do anything for her to leave him and be with me? Just why?

She's not around anymore, she's disappeared to put the uniform on and I hear Derek, our drummer, doing the count to start the song. The bar hasn't opened yet so we still have time. As usual after I see her like this, walking and shutting the world out because of the arse of her boyfriend, I play with rage and fire in my soul because she's blind, because she doesn't want to accept what I can offer, because she keeps standing up for a man who doesn't treat her right and who doesn't really love her. What kind of sick love is that when you hurt the person you supposedly love?

He's not broken, she's the broken one but because he broke her.

She's lost so many opportunities because of him. She could be so much more. She could be so far ahead in life but she's turned down every opportunity because of him. I'm surprised he lets her work here because she's told me if he could, he would keep her at home twenty-four/seven.

When we finish the song she's around again, a bun on top of her head and her black uniform with the black small apron on, and she's looking at me, an approving smile on her face after she saw our performance. She claps briefly before she notices the rest of my band staring at her. She looks down and walks away, hugging herself.

Again, she's afraid someone might tell her boyfriend we are friends and that bloke will hurt me. She's afraid, so afraid, and I can't save her. Worse, she doesn't want to be saved.

"You'd never understand," she's said to me many times and she's right. I don't understand. I'm incapable of understanding why she's still with him. Why she's doing this to herself. Why she can't love herself just enough to look for someone who won't treat her like shit.

I don't understand.

-:-:-

Let me know what you think.

Bel, xx