here’s something i’ve never had the courage to say out loud. i don’t know if it was ever real. i romanticized the truth into something that sounds more beautiful, and you fit the description of the girl from the back of the milk bottle, from your hair to the way you look at me and ignore our baggage.

i mixed our chemistry into something that looked like love, and my heart refuses to wear safety goggles. consider this an apology for all the love poems. i might’ve just been sad and lonely. i might’ve just been hurting too much for my own good. i always talk about how ****** up i am, but the truth is i am incapable of a feeling otherwise known as love. my brain has been turned bitter, like the way you bite into a sour apple and throw it away out of disgust.

i was starving and empty, craving something that would fill me up when self harm or starving myself failed. when i don’t eat lunch, i am reminded of you. i know it’s messed up, but i still have your smile warped into the lowest moments of my life. i think about how it ended a lot, even though i know these feelings are long overdue. it’s very like me to have many big, unprocessed emotions. i want you to know i’m working on it. i never meant for you to get caught in the crossfire.

i want to hide from my feelings and i want to hide from the prayers i said for you. i almost told you all of this, but i heard God does not like show-offs. i heard God does not like sad excuses for a shell of a person, but it’s much too late to change that for myself now. you should get out while you still can.

for future reference, forget it all. it was just my mental illness telling me i was worthless, especially when you were the subject of the poetry. i’m sorry i dramatized the pain into something that looked beautiful. in reality it was depression and anxiety masked as love. it was another way for my self-hatred to be fueled. i knew you would never love me, and i fed off of it. i needed it.

i’m terribly sorry, both to myself and to you. those nights of tears and heartache were derived from a very real need to feel an emotion other than sadness. i just ended up ******* myself over in the end. forgive me. i tried to avoid my suffering and ended up just bringing it back around to myself. i never meant to say this out loud. i hope, someday, i can forgive myself. until then, i’m sorry.