How Do You Like Me Now?

It's the kind of thing that turns a girl into a woman. Even if no one notices. She does. The greyer skies. The emptier bed. The longer nights that gather as she contemplates how she came to be where she is.

If paths are chosen, some are chosen in secret. Part of your mind rebelling against. All that you are. All that you should've been.

That small taste of escape leads to exile. You can never return to that person you were before. Before other things mattered besides forgetting.

Or if I must remember, not having to care.

It changes me, but I can't change it.

And I want it to change me back, but it doesn't.

The alcohol isn't to remedy how. It's to erase.