I had this book where I wrote down everything she did, like my own secret diary.
It wasn’t much, just a battered old notebook with creased pages and a broken spine, but it was mine. My only space. The only place where I could be honest.
Every insult, every cruel word, every time she twisted the truth to make me feel like I was losing my mind—I wrote it all down. Dates, times, exact phrases. Proof.
It made me feel like I had some control, like I wasn’t just imagining it all.
But she found it.
I came home to the smell of smoke.
She stood there in the garden, arms crossed, watching as the last of the pages curled and turned to ash.
I ran to the fire, but it was too late.
All my words, all my proof, gone.
She didn’t even look guilty. Didn’t even try to deny it. She just smiled. “You shouldn’t have lied about me,” she said, like I was the one in the wrong.
I felt so small.
Like I couldn’t do anything to stop her. Like I didn’t matter.
And worst of all, there was nothing left to prove what she’d done.
Nothing except me.
But who would believe me without the words?
