Literally, Honestly

As I sit here and reflect on things I consider to be a mistake, I cant help but begin to wonder about some of my past choices. With these choices, I never in the moment thought that they were the wrong thing to do, or in any way would impact my future life. Silly, i know. In reflection I keep stumbling upon the same idea over and over again. The idea of settling.

Everyone settles. That in itself is a true fact of life. However, I can’t help but wonder why we do this to ourselves. Hell, I can’t help but wonder why I keep doing it to my own self. We settle for a job we don’t really want, we settle for a partner that we don’t really love, and we settle to live a life of mediocrity strictly due to the fact that we are too scared to go out and attempt to achieve a better life for ourselves. Risks are scary, and settling is easy. 

Now that I have reached my mid 20′s I reflect on all of the things that I have settled on. It’s almost frightening to think of what my life would be like if I hadn’t have settled for certain things in my past and if i had just done what I actually wanted. As well as frightening it is almost heartbreaking in a small sense. Why do we consider what we settled for to be mistakes? Honestly, why do we do it in the first place?

I guess that these are questions that I cant even answer myself, due to the fact that I’m the one that is asking them too. I know that I want a big beautiful life full of everything that I want. However, at the same time I wonder how will I ever achieve that dream when all I have done for my entire life is settle. I have followed the masses and done what I thought I was supposed to do. 

I know you’re happy now, I am happy for you. I know I never was good for you either. I was so young and stupid when I realized that everything you did for me somehow in my brain wasn’t enough. Your gentle nature and kind heart wasn’t what I wanted. I used you up and threw you away like a dried up marker. You hated me, and I understood. You moved on, but with someone I cared about. I knew I had no right to care, but I did.

I went away to school. I forgot about you, and I moved on too. I was happy and I was in love, but like all things, situations change and life happens. I found you in my life again, years had passed and I thought you still hadn’t forgiven me. I was wrong. You forgave me and you still had an open heart for me. Things had changed for you too. My heart was so broken and I was so broken but like a paper to flame I had to be around you. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but I never stopped loving you, not really anyways. I never told you then.. but I did at some point. You put up with so much from me, and my broken life. Over and over again I found myself hurting you, when all I did was want to love you. I was with other people, I think you were too, but I never stopped loving you. Not really,anyways.

It was exhausting to know I was breaking you and dragging your emotions behind me while I ran away from how I felt. You wanted me, and I wanted you. The only problem was I couldn’t commit to something that might break me again.

You deserve the world and mine was too shattered to give to you.

I think it took seeing someone else give you what I was scared to, make me feel like I lost something I never really had. A small piece that I’ve held open for years and years that now I don’t know what to do with.

I’m selfish. When it comes to you I always was, I know I always will be. But that’s because I’ll always love you. I was a child who loved something I couldn’t understand and I turned into an adult who loves something she can’t have, or deserves. I’m sorry. I want more for you than anyone else, and I’ll never stop. I’ve never really put into words the timeline of things. But from 16 to 17 to 24 and the years in between I never stopped having you in my heart. Yes, I made room for others, and others had a great deal of my love too-but there was always a place for you.

I want you to be happy. I want you to be loved. I want what I could never give to you to happen. I still love you, just like I did at 16. I guess time doesn’t change everything, and sometimes it never will.

Love,

I never really liked you, but for her I did. For some reason you always hated me, and that was fine, yet I never understood why. I always was nice to you, and tried with you because I wanted her to be happy. I saw you. I really saw you, and I think that is why I had a sense of anger in my heart. I love her, obviously, but I thought you did too, so I tried. You didn’t love her, not really. Why did you always try and change who she was? Why did you always tell her to “stop” and that she was “annoying” when she was just trying to be herself? You did something I had never seen done before. I watched you make her small. I saw you take her bright colors and turn them pastel, and I saw you mold her into the shape that fit into your hand. I hated you for it. I never understood how you couldn’t see her for how bright she was. What was it that you “loved” her for? Was it because she always said yes so you didn’t get angry, or was it because she didn’t put up a fight when you wanted to get your way? That’s not love, not really. I held her when she cried, and I talked to her when she was sad. You were too busy, and you were always the reason. I gave the advice anyone would give, I wanted her to leave, and not because I was being selfish and wanted you gone, but because I saw someone I loved fading. 

She didn’t leave you. She never did. I held her again, time after time. You were the reason. You never trusted her. A person who gave you more than she had to give, and you always thought she was doing wrong. She wasn’t. Trust is a funny thing, something that is earned and not given, yet you never could understand that she had earned your trust 10x over. You never gave it to her, and it hurt her to the core. She never faltered, or acted as if she ever cared for anyone but you, but again, you never could see it. I saw her nervous, always. It was because of you. If her phone were to die, if she were not to reply in a timely manor, if she didn’t answer your call, I saw it inside of her-fear. An overwhelming anxiety of how you would react. Always checking, answering, updating you. She never seemed to understand the unfairness to it all. 

Honestly, my dislike for you grew as the years passed. You never did anything to me after all the years, but you didn’t have to; you were doing it to her. It took a tole on me too, but I bet you didn’t know that or why would you care? I watched for years and cried on my own time because I couldn’t help her, and I couldn’t get her away from you. I sat with her as she cried about being sad, and unhappy. I did all I could, but It tore my heart open everytime. I never told her, why would I? I confided in other places to try and solace myself for feeling as if I had failed her everytime she let your behavior go, or defended your actions.   

Why didn’t you let her have any friends? She is the light of every room and you would never let her shine. I would get mad at her. I would project my anger that I had for you, onto her, because she “was letting you control her”. I always apologized. I said sorry because I knew she didn’t fully understand it. You wanted her as your own. You even got jealous of me. You took a beautiful girl and hid her from the world. She tried to branch out. You made it such a problem that she stopped trying. She stopped talking to others, she walled herself in from the world to be yours. But, you still didn’t see it. You still pushed her down, molded her, made her answer to your time, your schedule. You never appreciated the complete selflessness that she gave you. 

She gave up herself to be what you wanted, but still you always had something to say. She couldn’t wear what she wanted, why would she, it might upset you. I told her she was beautiful. You told her to cover up. Why did you want her to hide how amazing she looked, why couldn’t you be proud of how gorgeous she is? She always listened to you, never to me. I understood, but I hated you for it. 

Her life became similar to updating a status online. Constant, never ending updates on where, with who, why, and for how long. I watched her lose her breath, and I watched her drown in you. She loved you so she couldn’t go. She was so small. A once big person molded into a tiny thing. She couldn’t see anything good about herself. She was dull, lifeless, and joyless. My heart hurt looking at what you did to her. Why did you? Why did you see Love as control? 

She finally left you. 

Years I had waited, and finally she was free from you. Her color is bright, and she smiles and laughs. She has a weightlessness to her that I have yet to see in so long. I might be selfish for being glad your gone, I might just be glad to have my friend back. You might think the worst of me, and that I am the reason that she left you. I’m not, I never will be. The reason is always going to be you. I’ll always be by her side, and I will always love her the way you never could. I will love her for her. For her laugh, for her jokes, for her explosive nature, and for her crazy hair and weird voices. I will support her decisions, and I will be proud of her accomplishments. I will never make her small, and never again let her feel like she is not enough. I will be her bestfriend and I will be there because you won’t. I will watch her grow and I will feel solace that she can breathe again. 

She still loves you. She always will, that is the way of the world. But, you never loved her, not really. I hope you can see that now. 

Sincerely, 

I think that at the ripe age of 24 I’ve began to realize how unrealistic it is to try and sit down and categorize the guys that I’ve dated. For so long and for so many of my friends I know this idea to be true. As I’ve grown as a person, I’ve been able to realize that I was never “stupid” for dating someone, or sleeping with someone. At whatever point in time it was in my life, that person fit, and they were what I wanted. Do I regret some of the decisions that I made? sure, but then again who doesn’t? For me I know that I can relate to all the females out there who have “the jealous ex” and then there is “the party boy” and “the fuckboy” and of course “the one that got away”. But as I began to think more into this topic I started seeing connections. All of these guys had good and bad qualities, yet I chose their worst quality in order to categorize and define them. Why is that? Why do we as a society do this to others and why do we just generally not acknowledge that were doing so? Personally I believe that it is because a memory is easier to have as a classified definition. You remember that person for something, but not for everything- in order to move past it, and move on.

We all have that Ex that is “crazy”, but are they?