Love, B

You may think that you won, since my heart is locked in tin, now that I’m quiet, cold, and shutting myself in.

But you’re the one who’ll live with regret, haunted by the things you’ll never forget. All your excuses, every confession, will turn into stress and become your lesson. Now it can be your obsession.

I wonder if you’re lonelier than ever. Was she worth the rush, the thrill, and the pleasure?

Cause you had something rare, something soft beyond compare, but you chased her for the pleasure, and for that, you lost the treasure.

Now you’ll regret this forever.

–B.N.C

Funny how I keep discovering new lies about you. You lied to me about almost every woman in your life.

After everything I've done for you and the way I've treated you, I pray to God that you'll never lie to another woman— or anyone else— the way you lied to me while portraying yourself as a victim. I deserve for the truth to be told about what you did and everything I did for you, rather than having the story twisted to make me the villain in yours.

I deserve at least that much after everything I gave to you. Maybe then, it would make up for all the times you failed to treat me like a human being.

I led you to my secret garden.

Not the one I let everyone see, but the one I kept hidden — the one I watered with every soft thing I still had left in me.

I showed you where the flowers grew after every storm.

I showed you which ones survived neglect, which ones bloomed from grief, which ones I planted with shaking hands and called healing.

And I thought you were there to love them.

But you were learning how to pick them.

One by one, you plucked the prettiest parts of me and tucked them behind your back.

I was there when your sky went dark.

I gave you shade when you were burning, water when you were empty, and softness when the world had made you hard.

I never asked for anything beautiful in return.

I only wanted to be seen by the person I kept helping grow.

But you took my patience, my tenderness, my forgiveness, my belief in you — all the flowers I grew just to keep loving you.

Then you walked away with a bouquet made from my survival and handed it to someone else.

And I stood there, bare-rooted, watching her smile at the beauty I bled to grow.

Not once did you bring me flowers.

Not once were you thankful for my garden.

You only loved what you could take from it.

Or maybe that’s the part I was wrong about.

You were never as broken as you wanted me to believe.

Maybe I fell in love with the person hiding beneath the hurt, while you learned how to wear that hurt like a second skin.

I waited for the day you would finally see in yourself what I had always seen in you. I waited for you to become the man I knew you could be.

And somehow, the saddest part is realizing you always had it in you.

You were always capable of building relationships.

Always capable of intimacy.

Always capable of building a life with someone.

It just wasn’t with me.

So this is my goodbye to the version of you I carried in my heart.

The one who needed saving.

The one who needed someone to believe in him.

The one who made me think that if I loved hard enough, I could help him find his way home.

Because now I know the truth.

You were never lost.

I was.

Lost in hope.

Lost in waiting.

Lost in a future that only existed because I wanted it to.

And even now, after everything, I cannot bring myself to regret believing in you.

In a strange way, I find comfort in knowing you are capable of all the things you once said you weren’t capable of.

I just wasn’t the person you chose to give those things to.

And maybe that is the clarity I’ve been searching for all along.

Not that you were broken.

Not that you were incapable.

Just that you were never meant for me to keep.

You always told me to give up on you, but I felt like I wanted to be that one person who never gave up on you. I wanted to be someone who you’d look back and say, “I did it,” and I’d say, “I always knew” you could.

Watch them count every mile, every silence, every time you disappeared, and somehow I still loved you through it all.

Let them find the words for all the versions of you I've loved— the one who laughed, the one who ran, the one who was broken, and the one who swore he'd never love again.

If they could rhyme it even sweeter, write it prettier, or make it hurt less, then maybe they know you better than I did.

But I'd still bet they couldn't love you this deeply, or carried your name as long as I did.

Because loving you was never the hard part.

I know that every time I come back here, it’s usually because something isn’t going so well, or because I’m fighting for some kind of happiness or victory. Don’t get me wrong—life isn’t always bad. But sometimes things become too heavy to carry alone, or I simply don’t feel heard.

A lot has happened in the past six months. Some of it has been life-changing, and there are things I’m not quite ready to write about yet. One day, I will.

One thing I am ready to write about is this: here, nobody really knows me. If someone ever finds what I’ve written, it could be months from now, years from now, or maybe never at all. Because of that, I have no reason to lie or pretend to be something I’m not. I have nothing to prove to anyone except myself.

I’ve written some ugly truths about myself here. I’ve written about mistakes I’m not proud of and things I wish I had done differently. But to me, that’s life. That’s what makes us human. We make mistakes. We fall short. We do things that don’t make us look perfect in other people’s eyes.

I’ve never been afraid to admit when I was wrong or take responsibility for the things I’ve done. That’s the honest truth about me.

I don’t wish harm on anyone. When I say, “I don’t have a mean bone in my body,” I mean that I’m not someone who goes looking for ways to hurt people. I don’t inflict the first wound, or the second. Sometimes not even the third. But eventually, after being hurt enough times, I will defend myself.

I think that statement is what caught people’s attention. Enough so that every mistake I made became proof of the person they had already decided I was. Because of that, all they see is a version of me they created in their minds—a bad person who dared to stand up for herself.

If you spend enough time reading what I write here, you’ll notice that I like to keep my peace. I stay quiet until something threatens it. Then I do what I need to do to protect it, whether that means standing up for who I truly am or walking away altogether.

Leaving doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you scared. Sometimes it simply means you’re tired.

Tired of being watched and waiting for the next mistake. Tired of people looking for reasons to confirm the story they’ve already written about you. Tired of explaining yourself to blind eyes and deaf ears.

So I’ve reached a point in my life where I have to ask myself: if people can’t see the truth, or don’t care enough to hear my side of the story, why should I continue caring about their opinions of me?

If someone only believes one side of a story without ever questioning it, that tells me everything I need to know.

Not everyone will understand me. Not everyone will like me. And honestly, I’m learning that’s okay.

The people who truly care will ask questions before making judgments. They’ll want to understand before they decide. Those are the people worth keeping around.

They say there are 5-7 stages of grief. I didn’t grieve this hard for my grandma, my aunt, my uncle, or my cousin the way I did for my friend Aaron. I never cried for them the way I did for him.

I went through the following stages:

Shock: I went through my messages, spoke to as many people as I could to figure out what was going on.

Denial: I tried to find any proof to see if he was really gone, but I couldn’t find anything. I texted his phone number, and his stepmother replied.

Anger: I became rebellious, searching for every single person’s information who wronged his death and his family. I wanted to control the people who celebrated his death. I feel terrible about it but it makes me feel worse that they planned to crash his funeral.

Bargaining: I kept wishing that I could tell him I missed him too and that I loved him. I kept thinking, maybe if I had spoken to him, he would’ve stayed home the night he died. I kept wishing I wasn’t short with him, that I didn’t hide away.

Depression: I slept for days and cried for days. I couldn’t do anything—no homework, no replying to friends—I just wanted to sleep.

Testing: I wanted to see how many people cared about me. I know many do, but the one I wanted the most wasn’t there. I'd test to see how far I could make it without being around people. I tested to see how long I could sleep in a day.

Acceptance: I started to feel like I’ve come out of my shell. The blinds on my window are open. My online status is on. I’m starting to talk to people, but not privately, because I know it’ll lead to “How are you?” “Are you feeling better?” I mean, it’ll be asked regardless, but it’s not personal and won’t go into deep thought.

Where did everyone’s heart go? Am I the only one left who still gives love, kindness, and sympathy, even in the cruelest situations? I feel alone in a harsh world. I have no one to truly hear the kindness in the words I speak, or to feel the love that I share. I have no one to console me when I am weak.