Yes,
you. It's me. I have something to say to you, so read it and take
heed. You can't tell me that what I'm about to say to you comes as
even the smallest surprise, from all the shit I've gone through
because of you. There was once when I wrote you a letter, telling you
that you found ways to solve almost all of my problems. In this newer
letter, an updated version of the other one, I declare that you were
the cause of all of those problems, both solved and unsolved.
I want my life back from you. You swallowed it before you even knew
me. I still remember, when we were in middle school, and you were one
grade above me, passing you in school and trying to catch your eye,
sometimes lingering at the end of hallways just to watch you round
the farthest corner. I loved you before I even knew you. And you
ignored me years before the first time you ruined me.
The first time you broke my heart, you were the first man I ever
really thought cared about me as a person. It was a time in my life
when I felt like I had absolutely no one, except you. You were always
there, squeezing my leg seductively under the table to distract me
from my loneliness, pulling me into your lap when I cried, kissing
every line of story that I cut into my arms. Do you remember how that
ended? Do you remember how you betrayed me? You were sleeping with
another guy's girlfriend. You couldn't even leave me for a girl who
was less despicable than you.
I pined for you, tried to stand up to you, but always fell short. I
cried real tears, all the time, curled up in a ball so many times
just trying to banish all those memories of you away. Memories of
when you gave me your sweatshirt on the first day we ever talked,
simply because you found me crying in a back hallway, and when you
sang The Partridge Family's “I Think I Love You” into my ear.
Against my better judgment, I forgave you, let you back into my life
in what was almost a friendship. We had a few encounters, like when I
interviewed you in a room where her clothes and artwork were tacked
up all over the walls. You were twirling a knife around your finger,
smiling your most beautiful, crooked smile. My body didn't stop
shaking the entire time I was there.
I dated you again, a few months later. This time, I spent most of
the relationship in tears. You ignored me, only visited me
occasionally, and never answered questions about what activities
you'd been engaging in. Once, you came to see me, and all of a
sudden, your face went blank and your hand shot out, closing itself
around my throat. You lifted me up so that my feet almost did not
touch the ground, with a look of nothingness on your face. I wasn't
afraid, the entire time. I know it qualified as abuse, but rather
than be as terrified as I should have been, I laughed at you. I
laughed at you as much as a person can when they have almost no air
in their lungs. I think that was what shocked you into dropping me.
You were pathetic. You think that hurting and choking a woman is
what makes you a man? You think it makes you tortured and
interesting? That's what was hilarious to me. And, isn't it insane,
it made me love you even more?
A
few weeks later, I found out through a friend of my brothers that you
were cheating on me. I left two angry messages on your Facebook wall,
but to be truthful, they were halfhearted at best. I said what anyone
would want the scorned woman to say. I said what I thought would hurt
you least and thrill my feminist friends the most. And then you were
gone.
How I missed you so.
You went through a friend, of a friend, of a friend to tell me that
you really really wanted to be friends. I had to believe it as truth
because of the trouble you went through. I reconnected with you. We
dated again. It didn't work out. Again. Big surprise, right? You
should have been paid for every time you broke my heart.
And now you're back. You want to be friends again. We only talk,
when you talk to me first. You're in my phone as nothing but a
number. But I love you still. And I always will. If you had any
decency, you would let me go and never talk to me again. If I had any
self respect, I would do the same to you, tell you to back off. I
guess we're much more alike than I previously thought.
