He found me at 15, full of fire.

Nothing to lose and everything to gain, I ached for a way out of the confines of my life. Desperate to escape the binds of my religion, and the suffocating rules of my family.

I ached for him, not realising I only saw him as my doorway into the unknown, I did not even give it a month before I left everything I knew, to be with him.

I always thought he called me cold because he could not control me, I always thought he clipped my wings because his ego needed me to stay within his grasp.

He underestimated what it meant to love a wild thing, believing my youth made me mailable, unaware I came into this earth with a fire in my belly and a scream in my lungs.

He could not destroy me with bruises. He could not break me against walls, even though he tried.

It was never my path to love him, but loving him was the start of my path to falling in love with who I was meant to be.