every moment we spent together
flows through my veins.
with each beat of my heart,
they are pumped through me.
these memories will always be there.

they will be there when
we’ve both grown old
and given up the reckless lifestyles
that we never wanted to lose.

they will be there when
you move far away from here
and hug your family goodbye,
knowing that someday
in whatever city you settle down in
you will start a family of your own.

they will be there when,
years from now, you sit in the backyard
of the house that you share
with the family that you assembled,
and tears fill your eyes
because you have lived a life
that you are proud of.

they will be there when
I finally stop running from my past
and find somewhere I want to stay,
somewhere that feels like home.

they will be there when
I kiss someone who isn’t you,
and I feel the same happiness
that at one time only you could give me.

they will be there when
I find the answers that
you inspired me to search for,
when I have this sudden epiphany
and I realize my purpose,
whatever that may be.

they will be there when,
years from now, I sit on my rooftop
staring up at the stars
above wherever I decided
to settle down, with tears
trickling down my cheeks
because I have lived a life
that I am proud of.

and you and I
will live these lives apart.
we’ll move on and forget
what it felt like to wake up
beside one another,
and we’ll find what
we’re looking for elsewhere,
and one day, we’ll understand
why this all had to happen
the way that it did.

what we have
will always exist somewhere.
in the sidewalk cracks
we used to walk over
hand-in-hand,
in the lyrics of old songs
that neither of us
have heard for years,
in the dust gathering
on boxes buried in our attics.

and sometimes
we might remember each other.
when I see a young couple
laughing in a diner booth,
when the bright beams
of a car’s headlight
shine through your window
and jolt you awake,
when we pass road signs
that we once drove by together
and cross through
states we once visited.
we might think of each other,
even if only for a brief moment.

and despite how important
this all was to me,
and despite how important
it still is to me,
I’ve folded up the days
that I spent with you
and taped them into
the messy pages of my journal,
stuck somewhere between
my 3am thoughts and an old,
yellowing photograph of us.

and now, I’m running.
I’m running away from every
droplet of self-doubt
that is trying to wedge its way
between my ribs,
running in the opposite direction
of words like “regret”
and any intrusive feeling
that is trying to trick me
into worrying that
none of this was worth it,
and that I am destined to face
a life of bitter loneliness without you.

because those thoughts are convincing,
but they are liars.
because all of it meant something.
even if parts of it hurt,
even if, to this day, I still can’t
understand the meaning of some of it.
because all of it was worth it.

and maybe you and I
didn’t have the fairytale ending
that we always imagined.
maybe we didn’t live our
happily ever after.

maybe the only place
that you and I still exist together
is in crumbled photographs
and life lessons and
these memories that won’t go away.

and maybe, even now,
there’s still pain there.
maybe the wound has healed
but still feels sore when it’s touched.
maybe we wonder what we could
have done differently
and what our lives would
be like if we had.

but in the end,
it doesn’t matter
how we began or
how we fell apart.

because in the end,
I’m just so happy
that I got to love you at all.

I am not afraid of
showing you my body.

I am afraid of
only showing you my body.

my mind is a mess.
a deep, beautiful,
complicated mess
of thoughts that twist
and turn and tangle.

I want you to be more interested
in prying open my mind
than prying open my legs.

I want you to be more interested
in me than my skin.

anyone can hear a heartbeat.
anyone can see a body
if it’s in front of them.

not everyone can hear thoughts.
not everyone can see love
if it’s in front of them.

“you ain’t a man until you’re given a gun.”
he said. but I knew better.
giving a boy a gun
doesn’t make him a man.
it makes him a boy with a gun.

my hands were made for pens, not glocks.
I told him his were too.
he laughed and said,
“nah, my hands are made the same
as every other boy on this block.
you cut off my finger, it’s still gon’ bleed.”

I tried to argue but he said,
“these hands steal ****.
money, jewelry, clothes.
hell, these hands steal lives!”

and he was right about that.
he had the same dirt on his hands
that any other boy around here had.

still, I think his hands
were made for pens, not glocks.
maybe he would’ve picked up a pencil
if his hands hadn’t gotten
so used to holding a gun.

he was nineteen.
he was young and angry
and ready to fight,
and he didn’t know exactly why,
but he knew he had to be.

the streets here are where people
disappear when it gets dark,
and where no one asks questions
when the sun comes up.

there are no flowers
growing next to the sidewalk.
here, there are bags of crack
and gold chains and Cuban cigars.
there are plants here, but no flowers.

I was taught that here,
they don’t follow laws,
but they need to follow rules.

most rules here are unwritten.
instead, they are ingrained
into the street’s children,
a mantra that you could die
for not remembering.

he said, “if I die,
it’s gon’ be sprawled out on concrete.
no way I’m going down
without a fight.”

here, they are still fighting wars
that ended years ago everywhere else.

here, they grow up without
mothers and fathers.
they learn to feed themselves
as soon as they no longer
need a baby bottle.

here, it is strange
to not join in on the violence.
it is strange to not participate
in drive-by shootings.
it is strange to not want revenge.

here, strange is dangerous.
things are the way that they are
and this is the way they have always been.

here, he was any other
nineteen-year-old boy.
here, they would say he died naturally.
he stepped a little too far into view
and a bullet struck him in the right spot.
or the wrong spot,
depending on how you see it.
quick and almost painless for him,
but that hurt moved on to everyone else.

here, there are no rights and no wrongs.
things are not good or bad.
things simply are.

his mama sobbed when
she heard what happened.
she cried for him, but also
for every other boy on the block.

she cried for the boy
who ended her son’s life,
because she knew
he wasn’t any different
than any other boy here.

she cried for all the mothers
who lost their sons,
and for all the children
born into this life.

here, they don’t have to die
for you to lose them.
this life takes them from you,
dead or alive.

he was a friend,
and a brother, and a son.
he could’ve been
a writer, or an athlete,
or a ******* astronaut
for all I know.

but in the end,
he was only a boy with a gun.
here, they call that a man.

I keep telling people
I’ve moved on.

but every time
I close my eyes,
I still see you.

there are visions of you
still trapped in the
back of my eyelids.

you’re gone.
you’re not coming back.
you’re not here.
I know that.
so why haven’t you left me?

I keep telling people
I’ve moved on.
and I’m not lying
when I say that.

I’m telling the truth.
I have moved on.

...but maybe my mind hasn’t.

I was your typical angsty teenager,
lust and recklessness personified
into a human body.

I never called myself a poet,
but I spent my days
writing to boys who never loved me
and parents who were never there.

I went through a photography phase.
I cut images from magazines,
women with stick-figure shapes
and too much makeup and sad eyes
that everyone seemed to love staring at.
I took pictures of people
when they weren’t looking,
found beauty in others
when I needed to find beauty in myself.

I went through a rebellious phase.
I shaved the side of my head
and dyed my hair blue, and then black.
I tattooed my skin and
pierced crazy places on my body.
I smiled at adults walking by
because they fell silent,
and I knew that they were judging me
but didn’t have the
courage to say anything.
I liked thinking that
I was braver and louder
and more confident at seventeen,
than these people were at sixty-four.

I snuck out and went
for long walks in the dark,
because the nighttime air
felt peaceful and still.
and when the world was fast asleep,
I could let go of my attitude.
for a few hours, I could feel calm
because nobody was watching.

I was walking home one night
with Molly in my bloodstream
and adrenaline in my bones
but I got trapped in my mind
somewhere along the way,
stuck floating in between
self-worship and self-loathing.

I ran away a few times,
usually ending up at my friends’ houses.
I drank from blue Solo cups
not knowing what I was drinking
and not caring enough to know
as long as it got me drunk enough
to dance all night
and not remember a single thing
the next morning.

I watched my best friend
sneak away, not so stealthily,
to go have ***
with boys twice her age.
I think she snuck away loudly
on purpose so that
we would all know  
she was capable of
getting boys to
pound her senseless.
I don’t think she was capable of
getting boys to love her
for more than her body,
but I don’t think she ever tried.

I fell in love,
or at least I thought I did.
I had my heart broken
and healed and broken again.
at one point, there was a boy
who taught me how to kiss,
and that the backseats of cars
are rarely as spacious as they look.

through our conversations,
I learned that this boy believed
in extraterrestrial life,
and that he hated the color orange
for reasons he could not explain,
and that when he imagined the future,
he saw me in it.

through my own heartbreak,
I learned that sometimes
words mean nothing,
and that people can lie,
and that we were too young
to imagine any future at all.

I made memories
that still haunt me,
and promises that
I broke long ago.
I lived in the moment
and didn’t want to
think about growing up,
or what my plans would be
one year from then, or five, or ten.

I didn’t want to think
about anything farther away
than the weekend,
because nothing was guaranteed,
and nothing ever stayed the same.

change is constant
and, to me, that is both
beautiful and terrifying
at the same time.

my hands are in your hair
and your hands are around my neck,
and you’re choking me,
but I’m letting you choke me.
and it’s hard to explain
because I am not in control, you are.
but I am choosing to let you have control,
and that choice makes all the difference.
_________

my ****** did not listen
to my voice saying “no,”
but he did not take away
my ability to say “yes.”
I am a **** victim.
I am a woman who enjoys ***.
I am allowed to be both.
and if you can’t understand that,
you are part of the problem.

you told me once that
I have an old soul.
you were wrong.

I wish I had an old soul.
old souls are wise,
and kind, and helpful.
they contain beauty
that radiates
from the inside out.

no, I do not
have an old soul.
what I have is
an old mind,
packed with remnants
of the past that I
have tried my hardest
to forget.

how do you walk through
a mind like mine,
filled with fragile relics and
antiques that could easily fracture
if you aren’t careful?

how do you go on
without the fear of having
to pay for the damages
if anything shatters?

you tell your six year old daughter
all about stranger danger.

“don’t get into a car
with someone you don’t know.”

“don’t listen if they say
that they have a puppy
or candy or something fun.
they don’t.”

your six year old daughter
knows exactly what to do
if she is ever approached or touched
by a strange, unknown man.
but does she know what to do
if the man who touches her
has a seat at the Thanksgiving table?


you tell your thirteen year old daughter
that someone who she loves
should never hit her.

“if punches are thrown, leave.”

“use that can of pepper spray.”

“if you have to hit back,
aim for the eyes, or the groin,
or anywhere weak.”

“run away.”

your thirteen year old daughter
knows to never let a man hit her.
but if he yells at her,
and degrades her, and scares her,
and maybe even grabs her
but not quite hard enough
to leave a bruise, that is still abuse.
did you tell her that?
does she know what to do
if he doesn’t leave any marks
and tells her over and over again
that he’s sorry?


you tell your sixteen year old daughter
to yell “fire!” instead of “****!”

“people will care more
about the well-being
of their own property
than they will about your life.”

“they will come running,
but only if the situation
affects them too.”

your sixteen year old daughter
knows that people can be selfish,
and if they don’t want to see something,
they’ll simply turn the other way.
but there is good in this world too.
there are people who will care
and who will love her
and who she can trust.
did you tell her that?
if she stops believing in love
and genuine people,
does she know what to do?
or will she settle for the first man
who gives her any attention,
thinking that he is all
she will ever find?


you tell your twenty-four year old daughter
that one day, you hope
her future is beautiful.

“marry an amazing man.”

“have grandchildren.”

“live happily.”

when you tell her this,
you unintentionally add
your hope for her happiness
at the very end of your sentence,
almost like an afterthought.
your twenty-four year old daughter
wants to get married
and live in a nice house
and give you grandchildren.
but does she know to put herself first?
or will she marry a man because
she thinks he wants her to,
and have grandchildren
because she thinks that’s what you want?
does she know that
she has her own voice?
did you tell her that
she doesn’t need anyone
other than herself
to find happiness?

even as a kid, I knew that
forever didn’t exist.
I pulled tulips from the earth
and brought them home with me,
but I wasn’t looking at the petals.
I was looking at the tiny hole
left behind in the soil
after the roots were ripped out.

it wasn’t about the
beautiful thing I had taken;
it was about taking something
from the planet that had
taken everything from me.

the tulips went into a vase and
I kept them, like any other kid.
but I wasn’t the kid
who marched in and proudly
showed them to their parents.
I didn’t show them to anyone.
I sat by the vase and
watched them rot.

they were my physical proof
that death is real,
evidence that my friend’s dog
did not run away to a butterfly farm,
and the old man down the road
did not mysteriously go to a better place.
they died, and they rotted.

I think about this often now.
I killed flowers not to admire them,
but to prove to myself that
even beautiful things can die.

I know how morbid that sounds,
but what you have to understand
is that my whole life had
revolved around death.

my childhood memories
were a sickening collection
of wilted flowers, of worms
burned into the concrete
after a storm, of rotting fruit
and swarms of flies.

my young mind showed me
the same images on repeat.
dead friends, dead relatives,
people who left me,
people who left this earth.

for my entire childhood,
I never got to stop seeing
lives that weren’t fully lived.

even as a kid, death didn’t faze me.
violence was nothing to me.
pain wasn’t fun, but it was tolerable.
even back then, I was numb.

I remember how being
so numb at such a young age
terrified my teachers and
scared my friends’ parents.

I didn’t know how
to explain that I was numb
because no matter what
horrors I was shown,
I had already seen worse.

my first love was young rebellion
and how it made me feel.
my second love was abuse.

I have been asked,
on more than one occasion,
how I could fall in love with
a man who I was scared of.

my masochism was
inside of me for years
before I admitted to it.
I like to talk about how
I didn’t know that it was
wrong for him to hurt me,
but somewhere deep in the
back of my young mind,
I did know.
I realize that now.

I realize now that
maybe I enjoyed it.
maybe that was part of it,
my own fantasies leaking
through the cracks of my
innocent, good girl persona.
or maybe I truly believed
that his abuse was
all I deserved.

my childhood had taught me that
I broke everything that I touched.
I came from a broken household
with a broken family.
I broke both of my legs at one time,
and started the next school year
with two bright casts.
I broke toys that weren’t mine,
and ceramic dishes that
I threw down too hard,
and the hinges of every
bedroom door that I slammed shut.
I broke hearts, including my own.

when I fell in love,
I had finally met someone
with no conscience and
no concept of morality.

he was a sociopath,
a narcissist, an abuser.
he was the perfect
subject for my poetry,
and the perfect match
to my masochism.

I looked at him and wrote
that he was the diagnoses
that flooded the pages
of some therapist’s notes.
he was the embodiment
of the pain that he inflicted,
terrifying but somehow
too attractive to resist.

he was a love story
jotted down by a nihilist,
a black hole taking me
deeper and deeper.
he was a blank slate
that could not be
written over.

he was as empty as a bottle in
the hands of an alcoholic,
a freshly dug grave waiting
patiently for a body.

I worshipped him
like an absent father,
idolizing his image
as if I had only ever
known of his appearance
and normality and charm.
I acted as if I had no idea
that beneath the surface of his skin,
he was nothing more than
a living corpse.

if chaos theory is
as real as death, and
if I was never traumatized
and grew up happily,
I doubt that any of this
would have happened.
but it did.

whenever someone asks how
I could fall in love with
a man who I was scared of,
I tell them this.

I tell them that
I fell in love with him
because he was already
missing something inside.
his mind had glitched
somewhere in his past,
and then it failed to restart.
he did not feel emotions
the way that other people do.
I’m not sure if he could
feel anything at all.
he was already broken.

I fell in love with him
because he was the only thing
I had ever encountered that
I knew I couldn’t break.

good girls
are not supposed to
get angry
or raise their voices
when they argue
or argue at all
in the first place.

good girls
are not supposed to
wear ripped jeans
or tight shirts
or say the word “****.”
good girls
are not supposed to
even think about *******.

and here I am,
having already used
the word “****”
three times in this poem.

good girls
are not supposed to
get plastered
on school nights
or tipsy before classes
or listen to music
with the volume
cranked all the way up.

good girls
are not supposed to
know which windows
make the least noise
when they’re sneaking out
or know where they can
buy cheap alcohol underage
or know who they can kiss
and where to kiss them
to get what they want.

good girls
are supposed to
smile silently and be pure
and go to church
or wherever they pray
to cleanse their filthy souls.

good girls
are supposed
to believe in
and put their trust in
and have faith in a god.

good girls
are supposed to
expect this god to
keep them away from harm,
and to never learn how to
keep themselves safe
if this god fails to.

good girls
are not supposed to
act anything like me.

the only thing
I have ever truly
believed in is poetry.

I outgrew religion by
the time I turned seventeen,
long before then
if I’m being honest.

I never turned to prayer for
advice on how to live my life.

I never turned to anyone
but myself.

I only consulted the bible
when I needed inspiration
for some tragic poem.

good girls
are not supposed to
write poetry
the way that I
write poetry.

good girls
never speak of or write about
*** and drugs and violent minds
and suicide and more ***
and broken hearts.

good girls
don’t sing along to
the lyrics of sad songs
in front of open windows
just for the ******* sake of it.

but good girls
don’t realize that life is short
until it’s too late.

good girls don’t ever
get to feel alive.

a girl like me
who gets into trouble
and refuses to stay quiet
and causes a scene
everywhere she goes
is not a good girl.

a girl like me
might be too reckless
and die too young.

but a girl like me
will die with no regrets
and plenty of memories
and so many *******
stories to tell.

a girl like me
will live the life that
good girls dream of,
but never get to talk about.

as you held me,
your hands moved across me,
your fingertips tracing
every curve of my body.

your hands wandered
until they found my scars.
every muscle in my body tensed up,
waiting for you to comment on them.

they weren’t new.
by this time, I had dealt
with all types of reactions.

there were the people
who were disgusted
and didn’t try to hide it,

the people who were made so
uncomfortable that
they didn’t know what to say,

the people who
insisted they understood
when it was obvious that they didn’t.

you were hard to read.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from you.
you pulled me closer to you
and held me tighter,
and I felt myself relax.

you didn’t tell me you were fine with them, you didn’t tell me you were sorry,
and you didn’t tell me they were beautiful.

you were honest,
and I loved that.

you weren’t fine with them,
but neither was I,
and that didn’t stop you
from caring about me.
you weren’t sorry,
you didn’t pity me,
and you didn’t change
the way you acted around me
like most people do.

but most importantly,
you did not call them beautiful.
they aren’t.

there is nothing beautiful
about self-hatred,
and these scars
are nothing more
than its byproducts.

self-harm is not pretty.
my past is not pretty.
my scars are not pretty.
I told you all of this.

you didn’t disagree with me,
you didn’t try to argue.
you simply held me.
you didn’t look at my scars,
you looked at me.
you didn’t say much.
you didn’t have to.

when you did finally speak,
you told me,

“you’re right.
your past isn’t pretty.
but that doesn’t mean
your future can’t be.”

each moment that you survive
takes you one step closer
to the time when
things will be better.

it might still be far away.
it might not be an easy journey.

but right now,
you are reading this

which means you are awake

which means you are alive

which means that
you have survived
every single moment
up to this point.

you have survived
every heartbreak

every loss

every laugh

every smile

and

you have survived
through times where
you weren’t sure you could do it.
but you did.

and now, you are done reading.
now, you are a few minutes
and 127 words closer
to seeing better days.
better days are coming.
just keep reading.
just keep breathing.

keep breathing…
keep breathing…
keep breathing…

you are the type of person I’d
write poems
about

but you’re also the reason
I stopped writing poetry
in the first place.

what can you say
to someone who is slowly
sinking into their own self-hatred?

to a person who can’t even
cry themselves to sleep?

to a dreamer
turned insomniac?

to a hopeless romantic
now only hopeless?

to someone with tired eyes
and bruised knuckles?

to someone who flinches
at your touch
as if it hurts,
but can hurt themselves
without a second thought?

to someone who drives
down a small-town road
at 76 miles per hour,
who isn’t trying to crash
but wouldn’t care if they did?

to someone who loves the earth
but hates the people
living here?

to someone who assures you
that everything will be alright
despite not believing in
their own words?

to someone who you are
terrified to lose,
but who claims
to have lost themselves
a long time ago?

you can say
“please don’t leave me”
or
“I love you”
or
“I need you”
or
“I’m trying to be ok
and I’m doing my best.
but I don’t know how
to get through this
without you by my side.”

you can say
all of this and more,
but you have to realize
that they might not be listening.

I can rewrite this poem
as many times as I want.

that’s the reason I do this.
the reason I sit up at night,
scribbling down sentences
that may never reach anyone’s ears,
stringing together words
that may never inspire anyone,
forming poems that may
never actually matter.

that’s the reality of it.
one day, these poems
aren’t going to be remembered.
maybe they aren’t even
remembered now.
maybe when they
reach my readers,
they go in one ear
and straight out the other.

but here, on paper,
I can erase what happened.
here, I can change the story.
here, I am in control.

I can rewrite this poem
as many times as I want,
but I will never be able
to rewrite the past.

I don’t know if I feel happy anymore,
but sometimes I don’t feel numb
and I call that happiness.
it’s more peace than happiness.
it’s more of a relief.
in these moments, I feel something
and I know that I’m still alive.
I must be alive
if I can still feel
…right?

when I get asked about my scars
and how I could possibly do something
so cruel to myself,
I want to say that
when I did it,
it wasn’t cruel.
I wasn’t trying to die.
I was trying to remind myself
that I’m not dead yet.

I’m a writer.
I’m supposed to be good with words,
and I am.
so why can’t I tell you how
I’m really doing?
why do I keep saying “I’m fine”
when I’m anything but fine?
why can’t I find the words to express
this feeling?

no,
it’s not a feeling.
it’s the lack of a feeling.

I haven’t learned
how to explain this yet.
I’ve spent years leaving and entering
this numbness,
over and over.
I think I’ve spent more time in it
than out of it.

I didn’t learn much, but
now I know that

the only thing worse
than feeling pain
is feeling nothing.

when I picked up my pen,
I wanted to write about
gray skies
and thunderstorms
and the sound of rain
and laughter
and splashing in puddles.

I wanted to write about
the hole he left in the wall
by the staircase,
and how it seemed so much bigger
than his fist.
I couldn’t believe he made such an impact
with one blow
before he walked away.
I couldn’t believe he made such an impact
by walking away.

I wanted to write about
cigarettes and smoke
and young men with blackened lungs
and why we love
the things that destroy us.

I wanted to write about
this numbness
and how I feel nothing
but everything
at the same time,
and how I’m not sure
which is worse.

I wanted to write about
your cologne
and your citrus-scented shampoo
and how the smell lingered
on my pillow
long after you left,
and how I found someone new
but still fell asleep
to the thought of you.

I wanted to write until
my fingers blistered
and began to ache,
and my demons fell
from my overflowing mind
and drowned in ink.

but when I picked up my pen,
I had shaky hands.

I sat there silently
and I trembled
and broke down
and let my tears fall,
and my thoughts did not stop
racing through my head

but none of them
managed to escape onto paper.

why would you smoke a cigarette
but leave half of it dropped onto the sidewalk?

“our cigarette butts leave signs,”
you told me,
“I threw it there to
let others know that
I can control my bad habits.”

this is who you are.
you’re the type of person
who leaves cigarette butts on concrete
to scream “I was here.”

you’re the type of person
who purposefully lives an unfinished life
for the world to wonder
what you would’ve done
if you had more time.

this was the same way you left me.
halfway through our dreams and goals,
only to find out that I loved you
wholeheartedly, obsessively, and recklessly,
while you walked away
with a mouthful of tobacco smoke
and halfway love.

I’m alright, I promise. You don’t have to worry.

I know that every note I give to you now sparks fear in the pit of your stomach, and you skim over my sentences looking for words like “suicide” and “I’m sorry.”

When I hand you a note, you examine every word. From my handwriting to the ink I use, you take in every detail. You read between the lines now even on a blank sheet of paper, where there aren’t any lines to read between.

Your eyes are trained to spot the differences now. My life has become a game of Clue where you are the only player.

When my voice cracks, even the slightest bit, your ears have been conditioned to tune in immediately. You are constantly scanning for hesitation when I talk. You watch me to see if my hands shake, or if I bite my lip. You are searching for the warning signs that you think you missed last time, even though I never showed any.

They say that when you lose one sense, your other senses grow stronger to compensate. We say that we’ve become so close, but what we mean is that we’ve always been codependent. We did not bond over shared trauma; we bonded over a mutual fear of being alone. Our anxieties have molded into one huge, chaotic mess. Our fears have become so tangled that neither of us know who is afraid of what anymore. The only fear I am certain of is the fear of losing you.

I lost my ability to feel anything, and you developed a sense of hypersensitivity to balance out my numbness. I stopped caring about myself, so you started caring about me even more. You feel too much when I feel nothing.

I know you won’t believe me, but this is not a suicide note. You don’t need to worry about me. I’d promise you, but I’ve broken so many promises that I know they have no meaning anymore.

I cause you pain. There’s no use in denying it; we both know it’s true. I’m not trying to push you away. Even if I did, I know you’d come back. I have been draining your happiness and health slowly. Now, I am trying to rip off this bandaid all at once.

I’d rather you hurt from this revelation of who I really am. I’d rather you hate me for being someone who takes the easy way out, than hurt you by letting you believe that I have the potential to be in love.

I am capable of loving, and maybe I don’t show it the way that I should, but I love you. God, you have no idea how much I love you.

What I am not capable of is trusting. I love you, but I can’t trust you. I have no trust left, not even for myself.

And what is there without trust? Love itself isn’t enough to build a relationship off of. We talk about love as if it is a miracle. In every fairytale, true love is what saves the princess. Love breaks the curse. Love can turn a frog into a prince, a beast into a man. We talk about love as if it cures all. But love isn’t as powerful as we make it sound. You can’t love someone back to life.

I don’t know if I even want to save myself anymore, and you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. I am so grateful for your love, but your love alone is not enough.

I’ve always said I’m a realist; you’ve always said I’m nothing more than a pessimist in disguise. Maybe that’s true, maybe I do see only the negative side of things. But those negatives have kept me safe. I prepare myself for the worst so that I can never be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised. I can never be let down. In a way, I guess we’re both right. Pessimism has been my reality. This numbness has been my reality.

When you’re done reading this note, please tear it up into a thousand tiny pieces. Rip it, crumble it, destroy it. Make it impossible to reread. Please throw it away and don’t dig it back up. Please walk away and don’t look back.

If you turn back around, and if I look into your eyes again, I know that I will not let you leave. I will pull you back to me and let this cycle of destruction begin all over again. I hurt myself, which hurts you, which hurts me. It will not end.

When you go through the photos of us on your phone, please go through them quickly. If you have to delete them, then delete them. Deleting a picture doesn’t delete the memory with it. I know that, but it’s a start. One less photograph is one less reminder of me. One day, when you’re strong enough, maybe you can go back and flip through our old albums. But by the time you are strong enough to live healthily without me, I doubt you’ll still have them saved. One day, you will leave me in the past. It’s hard for me to admit it, but I know that is where I belong.

When you climb into your bed at the end of the night, please do not remember me sleeping next to you. I know how wrong the bed will feel when you get up in the morning and notice that there is no warm spot left on the other side. I know how strange it will be to turn over and not roll into my arms. This loneliness will feel like a foreign language, but please, learn to understand it. The words will eventually feel natural on your tongue, even if it doesn’t happen until your tongue is in the mouth of someone new.

When what used to be our songs play on shuffle, please don’t ruin them with thoughts of me. I want you to be able to hear their lyrics without pain. You deserve to smile when songs begin to play. I don’t want you to have to turn the radio off. You deserve to blast your music loud, and to sing without embarrassment. You deserve someone who will dance with you around the kitchen the way that we did once. You deserve someone who makes you laugh, and who makes you feel loved. Despite what you have made yourself believe, you deserve better than this.

These songs deserve to mark happy occasions, not to bring up bad memories. They deserve to be sung to, not cried over. They deserve to be shared with someone who’d mention their titles to you in love letters, not someone who only writes you suicide notes.