January's frozen breeze blows a few tendrils of hair free from the messy bun adorning my head, but I don't mind. I close my eyes letting it bite my skin, making me shiver, making me feel something for the first time in a while. I close my eyes and if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost hear the music, the song we danced at the wedding... I can feel his strong arms around me, his warm breath hitting my neck. I can pretend that it isn't over, that we aren't over.

I'd customarily shake my head and reprimand myself harshly for thinking of him, but today I want to allow myself to reminisce about that day, about the time I thought there could be something more waiting for me with him by my side.

How foolish I'd been.

I hold myself tighter, hugging my torso, and twist the grey cardigan around me until it almost rounds me twice. It's safe to admit that I'm not the same Blair as I was when I started senior year. I've changed so much I don't recognize myself in the mirror these days in the most shallow, superficial sense but... there is also something about my lifeless eyes, the windows to a broken spirit that no one can quite perceive. Anyone can recognize the distinction but can't pinpoint exactly what it is. Neither can I.

On the outside, clothes that once fitted me well, now fall off of my figure like the heaviest, priciest silk. In a matter of two months, I ripped the extra weight that haunted me and more. Way more than I intended. Though, I still hide behind my oversized shirts and jeans. I ignore the reason behind that albeit there's a sense of constant nostalgia, sadness, and numbness. I feel like I'd be leaving a big part of myself, as if I were to leave me behind, by wearing new clothes.

They used to cover my hanging arms, my abounding belly, my thick thighs, the cellulite... I feel like a snake leaving her skin, changing, renewing itself completely, every time I change and look at my naked self in the mirror. I don't see me, and the feeling of being an impostor, a guest in this new body overwhelms me with each day that passes by.

I'm confused. I can't seem to detach myself from my past, from my insecurities...

Give me a kiss, Bear

You should let people see you

I don't believe there are words invented yet to tell you how beautiful you are, Blair

I tear up. Ever since I found out, about his relationship with Lucy, since I fought with mom, my dad, Merina... I've had this feeling consuming me from the inside. Like I'm in this sort of limbo; not in heaven, not in hell but somewhere in between. I'm in a foreign space where time runs by slowly, where I watch from a looking glass as life passes by while I'm just standing.

I don't want to wear my old clothes but I cannot bring myself to buy new ones. I'm in between losing my friends and strengthening my relationship with them. I'm between running away and being the one left behind. I want to get up and chase my dreams and I want to let the current take me away and let myself be.

I just... don't know what to make of my life anymore. I don't know anything, but the fact that I'm lost.

My family's there, but lately, I focus more on how they're not there. Merina has been trying to reach me, I want to let her, but I don't want to at the same time. After her pictures came out, she's been a mess and she says she's sorry for leaving us for Kyle and all those lying bastards. She wouldn't listen, and now I'm the one who needs time in silence.

They betrayed her, broke her, without a care in the world. At this point, I'm sure they're all cut from the same piece of cloth.

Danielle, Tori, and Camille have tried to cheer me up but they're reaching the point where they're getting tired of the endless negative answers. I can feel their anger, wariness, and dispair at the rejection of their advances. They don't know how to approach me either.

I feel like I'm hidden inside myself and not even I can decipher what's wrong. I don't know.

And Mason... I mean, Reid... well...

He's dating Lucy now. He had been for a while without me knowing. That night when Liam drove me home from the party had been the first time I heard of that and I was devastated.

"They'd been dating for two years, on and off. I thought you knew..." Liam dares to speak in my broken state only after I weakly let out the question.

I didn't know.

"Blair, sorry for asking but... did you guys...?" Knowing what he wanted to ask, I shake my head. "We were never a thing," I turn to look out the window of his car as we continue the way to my house in silence.

We never even had a chance. And he knew; the bastard knew.

Suddenly his hesitations to kiss me at the wedding, his mother's disapproval at his taking me as his date knowing Lucy was home by then, her glare when she'd seen me in his car that day, the way he averted his eyes when we got too close, how he hid me from his friends and concealed his advances as jokes... everything made perfect sense.

After our last class had ended the last month, Cole made a show out of thanking me for his grades and answering my unasked questions.

"Reid, here, was pretty helpful. Being your favorite student and all, we thought we could maybe get a snip of your homework here and there to, you know, step up our game,"

"Stop it, Cole" Mason grits out but Cole merely laughs and hugs him forcefully to his side. Best friends again it seems. 

"Oh come on, don't be modest. If Brandon's grades got better and I was able to save the semester was thanks to you, man. Blair wouldn't have liked to help us the way you did," He winks at me, mockingly.

I look at Mason, hurt and angered eyes searching for his, which were cast down to the floor. "You let them copy my work all this time?"  I ask, really meaning: that's why you made me fall in love with you? 

"Sharing is caring, Blair, why are you being so rude?" Brandon snickered behind him while Mason just continued to avoid my gaze, staring at the floor. "Anyway, you two had your fun right? Though I feel like Reid here, took the joke too far," Cole guffaws cruelly, and for a minute I'm scaringly sure he's talking about the kiss.

"Anyway, thank you, Blair. I'll make sure to sign a thank-you-note on your yearbook after graduating,"  He smirks and leaves me standing behind in the hallway, stunningly hurt and staring at a hesitant Mason with tears in my eyes.

"So that's why you got close to me, huh? Partner,"  I seethe brokenly but enraged; that finally has his eyes meeting mine. I almost fall for the pain vailing his eyes. 

"Blair-" He breathes, panic coloring his tone but I won't fall for his shit anymore.

"Save it, Reid," I say ardently, purposely calling him by his last name once more. "Next time just save me the hazard of making a motherfucking idiot out of myself-"

"Bear, please," He pleads, interrupting me.

"I don't ever want to see your face anymore," I hiss viciously, I'm on a rampage, urgently talking before I can hear his broken voice once more; before the sound of it breaks my resolve. "I want nothing to do with you, from now on, leave me the fuck alone," My sentence ends up resembling more to a frail plea as I sob and let tears fall from my eyes before walking away from him. 

I haven't heard of him since that day. All I know is that he's spending his winter break with Lucy's family at a skiing resort, happily in love and flaunting it on their Instagram.

I never gave him a chance to talk, and I've been wondering what could he possibly have to say. I want to ask him about that, and I don't for fear I won't like the answers I'll receive. I have so many questions plaguing my mind. I want to ask him if he felt the same as me at some point, I want to know if everything was only for show and have a laugh with his friends. I want to know why he had the need to hurt me like this, and why the hell had he made me the other girl as if he was oblivious to the way I abhor infidelity, as if I hadn't shared my parent's history with him before.

Or maybe... maybe he hadn't cared that much to deem me as such a thing. Maybe I was a mere plaything. I want to forget everything that happened, but at the same time, I want to know if there was something more -If I meant more. Though, I keep as still as he does, not acknowledging the subject evermore after that following Monday when I heard him talking about it.

We were in class, and usually, I'd be paying attention but I couldn't concentrate. I was so sad, my soul seemed to weigh down my body. Everyone was talking about the party, everyone was talking about how I'd been dancing with Mason one minute, then crying at the other, leaving the guests wondering about what could've happened. Everyone was talking about Merina's pictures which seemed to reach our entire school's phones that night, long after I left. I just wanted everyone to drop the subject, to stop talking about the damned party because having the issue being addressed was too much.

"Did anything interesting happen at the party last Saturday, Reid?" Cole smirks viciously, knowing I'm listening to their every word, being behind Mason on my usual seat.

"I don't know man, I was so drunk I can barely remember," Mason chuckles and fist-bumps Brandon to his side. His answer breaks my heart all over again in tiny million pieces. I gave him my first kiss and he was apparently too drunk to remember... Had he been that drunk? Either way, I feel like an idiot.

"Really? I think I saw you in the woods that night," Cole taunts him further, and I can feel his eyes on me, watching the impact and the hurt his words cause and relishing that. "Got any action?" I tense up, expectantly waiting for Mason's response. I hope he hadn't told them, that's the least he could do for me.

Mason laughs it off rigidly. "I'm telling you, dude, I hardly remember making out with Lucy in the kitchen. Can't remember shit,"

I had wanted to scream at him then, curse him to hell, tell him he's a liar, a manipulative son of a bitch... and I wanted to kiss him again, and hug him, and be with him. I still long for that... yet I know it would be a grave mistake to give in to that yearning. So I stay still, as still and unmoving as him, reigning in my heartache and acting as if nothing had happened between us, ignoring the way it kills me inside.

Damien has been like a star in the dark for me, even though being by my side has severed his relationship with his brother, he chooses to stay, regardless of my attempts to back off for the sake of his family. Selfishly, I've stopped pushing him away, hoping I get to hurt Mason the way he hurt me.

Mrs. Freiwald was the first angel that came to my rescue and I will forever be thankful for it, for dragging me out of the darkness consuming me before anyone in my family noticed, before I sank too deep and it was too late.

Still... I feel so lonely; I feel as if everything just went on without me and no one seemed to notice but those two people. I'm feeling like the only one who's changed is me and now I don't fit in my own world anymore.

I don't do anything to make my situation better, I don't have it in me to fight for it now, but I want it to be okay. I want me to be okay.

I thought I'd be happy once I was healthy, in shape, with a future programmed and full of plans ahead... and I'm not. I'm not even sure if I desire what the old me wanted, however, neither do I know what I want now.

I feel like I lost focus along the way and forgot why I was doing what I was doing with my life in the first place. Now that I reached what I wanted, I can't help but ask

Why?

These questions fill my head all the time nowadays and I'm unable to even attempt at answering them: why did I even lose weight in the first place? Had I wanted it? What did I want to prove? What do I do now that I am what I always wanted to be?

How am I, now? 

Who am I, now?

I lost so much these months: my friends, my first love before it even had a chance to bloom, but most importantly I lost sight of the plans and the things I wanted to reach, of the goal behind rebuilding my body; I've lost interest in so many things that I loved before... they just don't make sense to me, anymore.

I feel like I went missing along the way and now I'm just in this strange in-between. Between two halves of me: my past and my present, and I don't seem to know how to fit them together, they simply don't add up in my mind; they're two completely different people. I can't recognize this Blair, I don't know this side, and I don't want to be her anymore.

I don't want to be the girl that's sad or numb all the time, that talks back to her parents constantly, someone that shoves her sister and her friends out of the way, that lives dreaming of the past instead of the future for fear of not knowing how to build one anymore. I don't want to be the Blair that doesn't know who she is now.

Before all this chaos, I had it clear: I was the nerd, the fat girl, the easygoing and gentle idiot that you could treat like a doormat and she'd keep silent most of the time. I fell in love too easily, forgave too easily, and let my parents rule over my life too easily... That was me. That was Blair in a few words; I miss her -the stability of knowing my role, how my life would play out.

And yet...

I don't want to go back to her either, but it's all I've ever known. It's wrong, but I don't know how to be me without that part of myself... and I guess that's the worst I've realized so far.

Still, my silly heart hopes for the day when I look at life with a smile on my face, happiness shining bright in my eyes once more; it hopes for when I finally find who I am in this world, broken bits of my past fitting in and all;

and for love,

always hoping for love to come back to me someday.