During the day James acted as if he and I were like brothers. He was playful and happy. Even though he acted like this, this wasn’t him. Once the sun set and everyone was off to bed, he would change. All he’d care about was satisfying himself and he didn’t care that he had to hurt me to get that satisfaction. All he cared about was getting what he wanted from me. He made me feel like I was less important than everyone else. He’d take what he wanted and he’d leave me to cry.

“I do this because I love you and if you love me, you’ll let me do this.” is all he’d say and I'd let him.

One morning James went into the city and never came back home. He was gone for seven days. The first day I found myself missing him and waiting for him through the night. The second day I ignored everyone because I was so focused on when he would come home. On days 3-5, I worried he’d been hurt or maybe even killed. It went on like that until the sixth night when I felt relief that he wasn’t there. I kept telling myself that he was going to come home and everything would go back to normal. Then I thought about it. If he never came home then...he couldn’t hurt me anymore. I went to sleep that night with a smile, for the first time in years. The next morning I was up and overjoyed at the thought that James could be gone forever. I spent the whole day with Jane and the others. We played a bunch of childish games like Truth or Dare and ran around the campfire. The sun had set, yet we stayed up and told weird stories from when we were living with society. After a while, everyone got tired and went off to bed. I’d had the best day without James and I didn’t want to go back to what we had. Back to the painful relationship that he called “love”.