I did not pick myself up over and over again from the damage they have caused just for me to inflict the same to you. I did not bruise my hands and dislocate my fingers to break the chains that bound me only to use the same restraints to keep you down. Candles were lit to burn but what do I do when the very fire inside of me no longer gives light but only serves to cast a shadow over every person who ever loved me. My lips are a hollowed out auditorium for every word I chose not to mutter. Wanting you to stay became my greatest fear and it took every ounce of my fiber to teach myself not to yearn for your voice. Love is a beautiful thing but my love feels like an unstable bridge suspended between the shoulders of the past versions of myself I am not sure are alive. When I say I Love You, I mean I will force myself to forget you even if it means saving you from drowning yourself to save me from the vast ocean of hate and resentment I have unwittingly built and called home.

I am falling into an abyss filled with every bit of hate I have for myself and I’ll be ****** if I bring you down with me.

The first time it all made sense to me was the moment I laid my eyes upon you and I prayed to every god in this world to let me keep at least one good thing in this life. I wanted to love you the way I have never been loved before but how does a person born blind attempt to reinvent a color he has only heard about in stories. How did I expect myself to love you when my whole life that ******* word has eluded me, has been the subject of every poem I’ve written every time I put ink to paper - what the **** was I thinking when I regaled myself with empty promises of loving you when I have never felt it. Christ's mass and the nailing of Jesus was not told for people like me to feel loved. Being a ****** person and feeling bad about it afterwards does not make me a better person - it just means I am a pathetically self-aware ******* and the earlier I accept that, the easier it is for me to save you from myself.

I have accepted the fact that I cannot be loved. I am unworthy of love but please tell me I am still capable of loving someone because if not, then I don’t want to consider myself a liar every time I have said, with every fiber of my being, every inch of my skin, every crack on my bones and every breath in my lungs the words “I love you.”