eulogy of my innocence

by Shruti Goyal

"I wasn’t always like this. 

There was a time, when I loved like a seraph, like fresh flowers tucked between your favorite verses of poetry, like a gentle wave obeying the silent call of the moon. But back then I met a boy, and before I knew it, before I could even blink, my heart was a prisoner in my own rib cage, caged like the animal it was, my soul so thirsty for damnation. 

I was always a troublesome kid, looking for new kinds of hell to play in. What I didn’t know was how much I would like it, how much I would let myself burn in his hell.

All I remember of him now is that he was the boy who stole my virginal heart, the very first chapter of my story, the one who marked the beginning of my innocence’s end.
And this is the story of my Machiavellian loss of innocence.

Mother always said to be wary of those who came with a promise on their lips, “They are only looking for a heart to break sweetie, don’t give them yours”, she used to say. But she didn’t warn me that they would come in packs, like wolves, breaking me a little more each time, taking a piece of my innocence with them each time. 

“I’ll be your knight in shining armor”, they all said to me, and I laughed at the irony, at the thought of all the men who had said this to me before, at how I collected these hollow promises one by one, to feed the monster I was slowly becoming. 

How much they all loved to think that they could save me from my own destruction, and how much they drove me towards it. It burns me to think how much I wished I could believe they could save me from my worst enemy, myself. 

“I’d rather be unhappy with someone than be alone”, one of them said to me one night. I sat there next to him, looking into his eyes, wondering whether I should tell him my story, whether I should tell him how I chose love over loneliness, and how I came back to myself after it all came crashing down, only to find myself hungry for love once again. 

How I erected those walls of mine, higher and higher each time, making myself prisoner in myself, licking my wounds until the next one came along. How I gave them all my broken pieces, and how each of them put the pieces back differently. How they broke me, until I became exactly what I was running away from, a monster. How I lost my innocence, how I let them turn me wild, my demureness replaced by an unrestrained recklessness. 

And now, like a person with a dog on the leash, and I am both of them, plunging forward and pulling back, all at once, straining against the tether of my own will, dying a thousand deaths fighting my own delicate sanity. 

And this is the story of my Machiavellian loss of innocence.

Ah, how my heart breaks, how I burn silently in the darkness of those nights, when I think of all the people that I let in, of all the loves that inundated me, purging me of my innocence. 

Eulogies are wasted on the dead.
If there’s a girl out there who can feel her innocence slipping away, walk away. Walk away before they rob you of your fragility as they robbed me of mine, for this is why I eulogize my innocence."