To The Two Times I Gave Myself Away

I don’t think I will ever be able to look back at that night and remember it fondly. I wish I could conjure up the memories of the way you made me feel when you made that dinner just for me. But the only taste I have left from that night is one that stings with bitterness and regret.

I wish I wouldn’t have tried so hard to get you to want me. I wish I would have listened to my gut and known that it wasn’t the same. You were not the same. And that no amount of lace could ever change that.

I wish I would have left well enough alone. I shouldn’t have ignored the sirens blaring in my head, but the beating of my heart was deafening. I wish I would have let the conversation be enough. I should have known that I would never be enough.

I wish I would have said no. I wish I wouldn’t have felt like it was the right thing to do, like giving myself to you would have made it any better. As if anything between us could have ever gotten better. We were broken long before we left each other.

Every time I close my eyes and think of the moments that we shared together that night, I cringe. I can barely bring myself to think about it for more than just a split second. I feel disgusted, stupid, embarrassed. Ashamed to think that someone like you could ever legitimately want someone like me.

I think you went along with it to try to prove a point. But all you did was prove what I had known all along: none of this was real. We were never real. And you did not want me. I was just another warm body and ear to listen until something better caught your eye.

If you were only in it for the conversation, then why did you try and take more?

We could have gone to bed happy. We could have cuddled and woken up the next morning like all of the others: together.

But instead, my anxiety was all I had to keep me warm that night. They are right when they say that one of the loneliest places you can ever be is right next to someone who has fallen out of love with you.

You were right there, but I could never catch you. Every time I thought I had you figured out, you surprised me. You escaped, and I was left to pick up all of the pieces and try to move on.

But how can you pick up the pieces when you can’t even bring yourself to look at them?

It’s been five years and that doesn’t make it any easier. You never made things any easier. I gave and I gave and I gave and still, I was never enough.

I seem to always fall into the category of “never enough.”

I waited and waited and hoped that things would change between us, but they never did. I finally gave you what you wanted, only to have you treat me like a stranger. I have never felt more alone and unwanted than in those few moments we shared that night.

I was always alone when I was with you. It just took me too long to realize that fact. You said it would be different this time. That we would do things right. That you weren’t him and that we would be different.

Please tell me how this is different.

You got me, you left me, I lost. It’s the same story on repeat, day in and day out.

You could have changed the ending.

You could have been the one to make it better.

You could have helped me heal.

But you didn’t.

All you did was bring me right back to the place I had been fighting for five years to get away from.

Are you happy now?