I’m Not Sorry I Left When You Never Gave Me A Reason To Stay
Can't say I didn't try, right? By the time I said goodbye to you, I didn't have to say anything.
You were a lesson.
To say it was something else just wouldn’t hold true. For a while, I thought that maybe I could change you. That if you just saw what I saw, you would get stronger. Be happier and bolder.
I thought that if I could make you love yourself, then I could make you love me.
Well, of course I was very wrong.
But that’s the thing about you, what you did to my heart. I didn’t fall for you because I saw this amazing, finished, stable person. I think a part of me loved the parts of you that were only just starting to bloom.
It’s strange—looking back on all of it now, I can start to see the cracks. The frays, the lines permanently etched into my forehead. The long nights waiting for you to call. Hopeful stares, the excuses already on the tip of my tongue.
That’s where you put me, fumbling for the words to try and explain my unconditional, all-forgiving love for you to everyone in my life. It wasn’t until I grew tired that I realized how strong I was being. How heavy my arms were from holding you up. Just how much of myself I was losing simply by loving you.
I stayed for a long as I could. We both know that—me more than you, but I think that you know, deep down, that you will always pause for a moment and think about not giving me one ounce of one half of a reason to stay.
Can’t say I didn’t try, right? By the time I said goodbye to you, I didn’t have to say anything.
You just fluttered away. The minute that I stopped pretending that you were giving me your all was the minute that you stop caring about everyone. Even yourself.
For the first time, I saw you the way that maybe the rest of the world sees you. And it broke my heart, fully and completely and without any kind of delay.
That’s the sad part, though. I never really fell out of love with you, I just removed myself from every square inch of your life. I had no other choice.
All I can say now is that I know I tried. I know that I gave you every last chance. I forgave and forgot and then replayed and repeated and still, you handed me back nothing.
I thought that I loved you, but now I know that what we had wasn’t love. Not really.
Because I always came up on the losing end.
I just got tired of sitting in that same spot, living that same night, having that same conversation over and over again in a different setting, on a different day or month or year.
I don’t want you to say sorry, because all that does is made me regret you even more. I would erase you if I could, because I think it might take me longer than I’d like to rearrange myself into the person I know I’ll have to become after you.
But I promise, whoever she is, you’re going to regret letting whatever version of her you had walk away.
