November:
His embrace was comforting like curling up in front of a fireplace in the winter, a big knitted blanket draped over your shoulders and your fingers laced around a mug of hot cocoa. A quiet sanctuary from the cold, and that doesn't even begin to describe it. I'd press my body against his, the side of my head flat against his chest, and listen to the steady beat of his heart like the background of a melancholic song. His body would rise and fall with each breath, this pattern reliable and unending. Familiar and warm, washing away whatever toxic thoughts might have been plaguing my mind just minutes before.
It never seems to cross my mind when he's holding me, but at night, after he goes to sleep...doubt.
I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want him to love me and protect me and hold onto this beautiful little thing we've found, fragile like glass; it's pleasurable to look at and seems strong enough, but then your hands slip...you can try to pick up the pieces and put them back together, but they'll cut your fingers and taint the floor with little beads of crimson heartbreak.
It'll never be the same anyway, you might as well just give up.
We're just kids, and we have no idea what we're doing, do we?
But that's just it—we're kids. We're never going to be kids again. Ten years from now we'll look back and blame all our mistakes on being stupid teenagers, laughing it off without regretting a thing. So why am I so scared to make mistakes? Why can't I go out and live my life without being terrified I'll fuck up on a scale so massive that even I could never forgive myself?
No. It isn't me that I'm scared of disappointing. It's you. I'm afraid one day you'll start to see me the way I see myself, the way I really am. I know you don't, because you look at me and say I'm beautiful. But with all my walls down, with my clothes off, with no makeup and no lies, would you still think I'm beautiful? Would you look at my scars and the broken shell of a girl I am and call it a work of art?
Even if you did, it'd be a different kind of beautiful. No longer would you see cool flower petals and sunsets over mountaintops, but the big picture—rose bushes with thorns and a sun that scorches everything that gets too close.
Would you love that side of me just as much?
I know you should. I know you probably would, because you're everything in a lover I thought was asking too much. But I still have this illogical fear that you'll decide you don't want me anymore. I always thought those 'what girls want from guys' lists were something that would only be completed halfway, and I expected what I got from the only other love I've ever experienced. The words 'I love you' over text and attention on rare occasions. But you're so much more, more than I deserve and giving more than you need to give. I'd love you even if you didn't give me your hoodie or text back fast, even if you didn't stay on the phone with me all night because I didn't want to be alone with my thoughts when I was breaking down. Even if you didn't do everything you could to help me and make me feel loved, even if you didn't try at all, I would love you still. But you do—you do all of it even when I don't ask for it, and that might just be the best part of it all. My heart has attached half of itself to yours, the part that was held together by bandaids and dried tears for so long. And you've healed it in a way I never could've, you've made me feel like I'm not unlovable, like I deserve to live and be happy. It's okay if you break it, because I don't think I could ever hate you. I'd forgive you time and time again, I'd let you hurt me and break me and stomp all over me if you wanted to because I could never say no to you. But I know I'll never have to, not about anything serious. I'm so confident that you'd never cheat on me or lie about something big, or abuse me or ignore me. Maybe that's naïve of me, but it's how I am. I love you with all of me and I'll give you all of me if that's what you want.
January:
His absence left me feeling hollow—as if my insides had just disappeared and I could barely even be considered human anymore.
I asked myself—what did I do that was so wrong?
I always said I'd have done anything for him, but when he asked me to do something for me, for my well-being, I just couldn't. It terrified me, which made no sense to him, and I could hardly explain because it didn't make much sense to me either.
You'd think falling into the abyss would be the scariest part, but crawling out of it is so much harder. How has the world changed? How have I changed? Who am I without this darkness?
Maybe he was right. You can't love someone until you learn to love yourself. Maybe this was true, but God, it felt like love. Felt—funny how I'm already using the past tense. Does that mean I'm moving on? Is it obvious how much I hate change? I don't want to hate him because he was a damn good boyfriend, but the way he left? That almost broke me completely. I came so close to truly shattering but then he pretended to care, pretended if I were gone that it'd actually make a difference, but now I know that that's a fucking lie among so many others. He doesn't care.
No one really cares.
Does he even know what I thought of him?
That he was perfect, that he held the whole universe behind his eyes? The way he carried himself, the way he could brighten up my day even when everything else was wrong?
No, because I never told him.
Everyone says, oh no, it's not your fault, he's just a bad person and you're better off without him. But they wouldn't really know, right? I'm the one that loved him, that wanted to learn everything about him and listen and felt like every word was a whispered secret and every promise was set in stone. Oh, how wrong I was—so many lies, so many broken promises. So why do I still think he's a good person? That he left to be happy because I wasn't enough, that he deserves to be happy and she's the only one that can give that to him?
My fear of losing him was never illogical, was it?
I hate that it was out of my control yet still my fault. He didn't trust me, he never trusted me.
He trusted her, so she helped him, and he fell in love with the girl that was there for him while I never had any idea about what was going on.
If I had, would I have told him how I felt? That he was healing me and making me happier even if it was a slow process? That he was the first thing to ever truly make me feel like I wasn't worthless? That he was more than good enough and everything you'd want in a person—balanced out, sweet, funny, smart, one-of-a-kind.
We had a conversation once—it's a psychological fact that girls bounce back faster after a breakup, and he said, "Yeah, because they don't really care."
Is that what he thinks? That because I'm so angry now I've just moved on and he's dead to me?
There are so many questions I'll never have an answer to, so why do I bother asking myself them? Ah, that's one more.
I don't want to feel empty anymore, but I don't want to replace him—yet he's already replaced me with someone better in every way.
I've developed crushes on 3 different people already, simply because they were there for me. Note the use of the word 'crush' rather than 'fallen in love'. I want to love again, but I can't imagine someone else in his place. I know I'll move on eventually, but it's going to take so long and I don't know how much more of this my heart can take. All I want is someone to love me and fucking mean it, without getting into the relationship and thinking "well I'll just love her until her depression goes away." That's not how it fucking works. This is me, and I know I fucking suck, but you could at the very least tell me I'm a burden from the start rather than try to change me because you happen to like the rest of me. It's a part of me now; hell, maybe it even defines me. Guess that's what I get for being a shit person.
You can't love someone until you learn to love yourself. But don't you see? You were teaching me to love myself until you plunged me right back into this cycle of self-hatred because this practically impossible healing process was taking too long. Yeah, with time, you would've made it better. But it never would've truly gone away.
Oh god, I love him more than anything or anyone else in the world and he threw me away like garbage because my love wasn't enough. I'm sorry "I'd do anything for you" was a lie—I just didn't consider that you'd ask me to take care of myself because you loved me. But did you really ever love me? If it was so easy to walk away, did you ever truly care or was I another relationship you jumped into out of loneliness or boredom or whatever other shitty reasons you've had?
You can't love someone until you learn to love yourself.
But he forgot to mention—
You can't love someone until you grow up.
