“If you knew the truth and said nothing, you are not innocent.” –Cleo Wade
My Interpretation: Odessa did not have to scream or slander – even though she did that too. She just had to stay quiet long enough for me to be erased. & she did. She was my safest place until she became the reason I did not trust any. She did not just betray me. She just broke something sacred.
🩸 Odessa: The One Who Lied While Holding My Hand
The girl who watched me bleed
& said she would help –
but handed the knife to someone else instead.
🧖♀️ The Beginning: The Night Everything Changed
We met the night I burned Grady out of my life.
That should have been the beginning of something good.
It felt like fate –
Two girls on the cusp of something more.
She did not just show up. She anchored.
At least that is what I thought.
I surprised her with her first spa day.
We went to tourist towns.
I opened my heart –
& she tucked a knife inside it.
I went to bed that night, exhausted.
Sent Cade a still photo – proof I was alone.
She went out.
She made friends.
I woke up to a call asking me to come get her.
Of course I did.
But behind my back?
She told Cade’s friends the opposite.
Said I was out flirting.
Said she picked me up.
Except Cade had the photo.
Time-stamped. Verifiable.
& that’s when the cracks started to show.
🎭 The Pattern: Lie Softly, Lie Often
She did not just lie once.
She lied often.
Said I was shady while dating three men herself.
Said I was the sketchy – while fabricating an entire narrative about me.
She did not do it loudly.
She did it surgically.
Every time I confronted it,
her story shifted.
She acted confused.
Then her story changed.
& the more it didn’t add up,
the more I realized she had always been rewriting me in rooms I was not invited to.
Made me feel like I was overreacting.
Like I was paranoid.
Like my intuition wasn’t screaming.
But I had screenshots. Receipts.
I kept my own truth in my pocket –
& when Cade’s friends cornered me?
I shoved the truth in their hands.
Timeline. Proof. Clean.
Silenced the accusations.
Because I had nothing to hide.
Odessa?
Couldn’t say the same.
🕳 The Empty Echo Where Friendship Lived
I grieved Odessa like a death.
Right alongside my mother.
No female has ever gutted me like that –
except the woman who raised me.
She knew everything.
About Cade.
About Sabrina.
About the lies circling me like vultures.
& she still sat in silence.
Let Cade mock me with truths I did not even know he knew –
Because she was the one feeding him the script.
She stood beside me while they set fire to my name –
& handed them the gasoline.
She did not just let it happen.
She helped.
She could have said something.
Could have clarified.
Could have corrected a single lie.
But she did not.
She was the quiet in the middle of the storm.
But that silence?
Made her complicit.
✉️ The Letter I Never Sent
I wrote her a letter.
Not to give.
To survive.
Because I had to let go of what she took from me –
without begging her to give it back.
It was forgiveness without applause or conditions.
Without contact.
Without closure.
I never mailed it.
Never shared it.
Because that forgiveness?
Was not for her.
It was for me.
She never earned it.
She still has not.
But I needed it –
so, I could stop rehearsing the pain
& start reclaiming the parts of myself she helped fracture.
👶🏼 The Future I Still Believe In
She is married now.
Has kids.
& despite everything she did –
I believe she will be a damn good mother.
Because I saw her potential.
Because I saw the pieces inside her.
The soft ones.
The scared ones.
The ones that made mistakes out of trauma, not cruelty.
& I also saw the wreckage she left behind.
That is the part that still stings.
I forgive her.
But I do not believe I could ever trust her again.
Because I needed her.
I reached out in my silence.
& she did not just miss it –
She ignored it.
🧨 The Truth
Odessa shattered something in me I am still rebuilding.
She made me question every female friendship that followed.
Made me hesitate to open up.
To let anyone close.
She did not destroy me.
She just forced me to learn:
That not every woman who smiles in your direction is safe.
That not every arm around your shoulder means “I have got you.”
That some of the most dangerous betrayals
come from the people who once held your secrets like sacred scripture.
She just rewired the way I connect.
Made me strategic.
Made me suspicious.
But I am not ashamed of that anymore.
Because survival is not bitterness.
It is clarity.
She knew the truth.
She said nothing.
& that is not innocence –
It is betrayal in disguise.
I hope she grows.
I hope she heals.
But I will never forget what silence can do in the hands of someone you trusted to speak up.
xoxo ♡
Whisper to the ghosts. Yell into the void. Just don’t be an asshole.