I Was An Empty Vessel

I used to believe I was dead. I thought of myself as a shell and would consider my body alien among this world of living beauties. I was an empty vessel and the oceans of life moved me and tossed me and shredded my exterior. It didn't matter if I sank, after all I was vacant. I was no longer.
I see now he wanted me to believe that because he thought that if I knew what I was I would leave. Maybe I would have ~ no one will stay forever if they are never seen, appreciated, loved back. In the end I left anyway, my heart long before my body. Habit brought me home when he called. The familiar made me pick the phone up every now and again. Only when I realized I was not this dead thing I dreaded being I could no longer lie to myself or to him. I was not in love ~ I had never been. I used him to fill a painful crack in myself and I let him hurt me because I was afraid of the real pain. The pain of loss and broken hope. The pain of being alone and having to see myself, not as the girl I loved, wearing torn black lace and silver crosses, but as the woman I had become, unable to recognize myself in the mirror.
He refuses to see me as I am, as the person I was becoming the person I want and love to be. He doesn't want to see it, I imagine that might hurt him.
But I am alive, I wont apologize or pretend. I am vibrant, I am beautiful ~ even if not in the most perfect, heroin-sheik way I used to think I should be. I am a writer writing, what is more beautiful. I am an artist sketching ~ it's what I am, what I'm doing, it's what makes me ~ me, and that is awesome. I feel like I've finally found my skin, the skin I fit in. I feel like I am home, safe and warm. I feel alive.
I used to believe I was dead ~ I am more alive than ever.