You Told Me Not To Love You; I Loved You Anyway.

You told me not to save you; I tried anyway.

You told me not to love you; I loved you anyway.

You told me not to try; I regret that I did.

It killed me inside when you would try to justify your pain as any worse than my own. Like my pain wasn’t good enough, bad enough, to ever measure up to the damage you’d received. Because when my demons tried to dance with yours all they ever did was end up in ashes lying next to us on the floor.

It killed me the way that I could “never understand you,” based off your own perverted perceptions. Like my own experiences weren’t real, and I was just confused. Despite the fact that my demons were so loud some days that I couldn’t even hear myself scream.

It killed me inside the day you told me I was nothing; a nobody, as I watched your demons put out the light in your eyes. Like your soul had been ripped apart for so long that there was finally nothing left; and I wept for you.

I wept for the empty shell that you had become. I wept for the pain I had endured for your sake. I wept for the hopelessness that I saw in your eyes. I just wept.

I stood there in the kitchen, time after time, staring down at the knife in my hand, tears streaming down my face, listening to the whispers in my head.

You never knew.

You never saw how I was breaking just as much as you.

You never let me listen, you never let me speak, and you never let me breathe without your validation. That’s why we burned.

We burned because I could never amount to the vision you had of myself in your head. I could never silence your demons, and how could I, when I couldn’t even silence my own.

The lies you told me on a good day held no meaning on the bad. It was as if your words were a scalding iron and my heart was the wrinkled mess. With each touch you seared them into my heart, scarring me until there was nothing left. Until it couldn’t beat anymore and I was left shattered on the floor.

I couldn’t feel the day you left.

And that’s when it hit me. That’s when I finally understood your words. All of those times you berrated me with empty threats and promises that would never be kept you were screaming on the inside; I just couldn’t hear you. I didn’t recognize your sound.

I was nobody to you.

You had dug such a deep pit in my heart that the only sounds I could hear were the voices inside my own head. There was no room for you just like there was no room for me.

So as I watched you walk out the door, carrying nothing but regret alongside you, knowing it would be the last time I would ever feel the weight of your demons beside my own, the only thing I could whisper was, “Aren’t you a nobody too?”