5SOS Imagines

Michael Song Preference - "When She Was Mine" by Lawson

Author: Rhine

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Everywhere I go
Everything I do
Reminds me of you

How do you cure love?

The visions of the future you believed you could have – no, the delusions – the heart rate pounding much too fast, the sickness that always kept that Cheshire smile on your lips and the restlessness at night; the constant falling and falling and forgetting what it was like before you were so lovesick, before you were infected by a single touch that spread like disease.

He doesn't know how he's supposed to move on – how he's supposed to forget the taste of your lips that was his cherry red medicine to his lonely life, how he's supposed to cure himself of your fingertips tracing his skin that was his physiotherapy to his sore bones for how the world beat him down.

It's an infection, he thinks. It takes over him and he's this lovesick boy for you that everyone can see.

Even after you're gone.

How do I stop loving you?

How does he stop himself from seeing your smile on every stranger's face and saying your name to every new conversation, how does he stop himself from dreaming of you and waking up lonely; how does he stop himself from loving you, how does he cure himself of you?

And he's no doctor, but he thinks your love was a disease that was taking over him, that his days were numbered with you, without you.

And he's no surgeon, but he thinks the only way to treat an infected heart is to cut it out; take it right out of his body before it spreads through to everything he was.

He doesn't know which is worse – loving someone who no longer loved you back or not feeling a thing.

Having a broken heart or none at all.

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When she was mine
Everything was easy
Everything was simple

It was easier then, he thinks.

None of this messy goodbye, no more pathetic come back; no more shaking fingers hesitant over your number on his phone, no more tossing on his bedsheets and wondering why you left, what you thought of him now, what changed your mind.

And he doesn't like how you take up space in his mind now, how it's constant fiddling and wondering where it all went wrong, the heartbreak of trying to figure out where all his love was supposed to go and where yours went; Michael doesn't like how the only space you have in his life now were love-tainted memories that only mock his loneliness without you now.

It was easier to hold you in his arms than to let you go, it was easier you to say I love you to the base of your neck than your retreating figure, it was easier to be the cause of your smile than the reason for your tears.

I'm sorry Michael. I just – we just... just couldn't work out the way we wanted it to be. I know that. I hope you can see it too.

It was easier to love you when you loved him back.

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Now I'm breaking at the seams
Dropping to my knees
Nothing left of me, no

And is it melodramatic to be heartbroken?

To crave you like a drug, to protect himself from the memory of you like a virus but to succumb to the infection of the happiness you used to bring him, to succumb to the loneliness you gave him now; to cry into his pillow and to dream of you coming back?

Is it melodramatic – no, is it foolish, really – to love you back?

He doesn't want to believe that it's nothing now, he doesn't want to believe he's diseased; he doesn't want to be cured of you, he doesn't want to love someone that isn't you.

And he'd rather die – even if you're already killing him by moving on.

Maybe he's being overdramatic.

But how do you tell his breaking heart to stop crumbling at the thought of you, how do you tell his crosswire veins to stop carrying the love he has for you?

How do you tell someone to stop loving, to stop hurting?

It's best if you moved on, Michael.

And he wants to scream, he laughs derisively – don't you think I tried, don't you think I want to? Don't you think I want to hate her for what she's done to me?

You don't want that, Michael.

Don't you think I wish I could stop loving her so that she could stop hurting me like this?

Michael...

But no matter what – no matter what I wish for, no matter what I want – I'll always want her more. And I can't change that, just like how I couldn't change the fact that she changed her feelings for me.

Michael, you need to forget her.

How do you forget someone that you love so much? How do you forget a piece of yourself?

She did.

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I wanted to remember
Never missed a second
Now I wish I could forget

And if he could turn back time, if he could miss that first day when he first laid eyes on you – if he had turned the other way and missed how your smile stood out from the crowd, if he just a minute later after you left, never to cross paths – if Michael could go back to the very beginning and erase those first, innocent moments –

Hey, I'm Michael. I, uh – I saw you over there and I... I couldn't help but to come over and say hi. You... you have the most beautiful eyes, I – I would love to know the name that goes with them.

Back before you knew how much you'd hurt each other, with his love, with your absence of it.

And if he could go back, turn back the clock, rewind past all the kisses and unfilled promises, go past all the memories you swore you'd never forget – if he could take it all away and turn his back from you on that first day –

Would he?

I'll always love you, Michael Gordon Clifford.

And he wouldn't have you, but then he'd never have you to begin with; he'll never this heartbreak over something that isn't his to begin with then, he'll never have the memory of you haunting him.

He'll never have your kiss that saved him, he'll never have the love that crippled him to this broken man; he'll never have the happiness and he'll never have the pain.

He doesn't know if he'd rather remember or forget.

What would you choose?

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