Sometimes I Forget That We're Not Even Friends.

This is the last day of my life that I will be in the same town as you, the last day I will hear your voice on the breeze, and the last day I will ever lay my eyes on you. I am never going to see you again, so I wrote you a goodbye letter trying to get it all off my chest, because if you're going to leave, at least take my last words- my confession- with you. 

I punish myself by watching you leave every night

I wonder if you always knew that, deep down.

Knowing if I could have only done one single thing right,

I wouldn't be the mess that I am now

Cause if watching you leave is the only way to be close to you still

Then I'll let you walk away from me for the rest of my life.

And I need you to know that I try so hard not to be sad all the time,

But my mind and the remnants of my heart won't ever shut up about you. 

Every living moment, I lie hollow in my bed, feel your ghost inside my head,

The cavern in my chest that was once full of raging love

Drain's out slowly, till it's empty.

And that's all I'm ever going to be now-

I fear that I'm always going to be empty.

And I choke back the lump in my throat, trying not to let it consume me,

abuse me, remind me of how twisted this story ended.

The parts that you carved out and took from me,

I can hear screaming across this town

they want to come home

my heart wants to come home

but she doesn't know that you're no longer my home now

I'm still bleeding, bleeding all over these sheets and sidewalks and desks and steering wheels and bars and people and why can't you see me bleeding? Why don't you care anymore that I'm bleeding? What happened?

Why can't you see this massive hole you've gouged from my chest and left open, just bleeding?

They say time was supposed to heal, but every time I wake up, still in this nightmare, the stitches get ripped out and I continue on bleeding.

And I'm so angry with myself.

I get so angry with myself that I scream into my comforter about how pathetic I am. About how even though I tell myself it's okay and it was nothing, it still consumes me like a never-satisfied monster. 

This is my punishment for not telling you the very first night.

This is me lying in the grave I dug, being forced to cry into nobody's arms but my own for the rest of my life. 

I scrub and rip at my skin with bars of soap and bloody fingernails, hoping to one day scratch down deep enough to be able to clean my heart of you too. 

How can people see beauty and find love in everything, in everyone, in someone new?

Everything I look at has some obscure dotted line, mapped back to you, and you are somehow both the epitome of love and everything it couldn't possibly be. 

I'm jealous that you're able to replicate a better me so easily, while I still struggle to not leave bloodstains on everyone I touch. 

I'm scared of ghosts, standing over my bedside. I'm scared of dreams tricking me with their poisonously sweet smiles. I'm scared of tall men with deep voices, I'm scared of infidelity, I'm scared of friendships, I'm scared of scapegoats. 

I'm scared of losing the distractions that take my mind off the constant burning in my lungs, the fire you once loved to pour gasoline on still struggling to stay alive.

I am scared of you in the saddest, most brutal way. 

It's tough watching everyone live out my dreams while I'm trapped behind glass. It's tough, when you care about someone, it's just tough. 

When will this cavern be full again?

It's about time I got out of this town. 

I remember asking for 5 more minutes with you, so I could tell you that I loved you, and that I was sorry for it, and that I was sorry that for a brief second in our lifetimes, you loved me too.

But you couldn't give me 5 more minutes, because I had wasted 2 years already, and I still do not understand where those years went and what made you so cold to the touch so suddenly, but life happens. The toughest lesson I'm still trying to learn is that life happens, and people change, and as much as I had prayed that you wouldn't, you did and it's okay. I'm trying to be okay with it being okay.

So I will give myself the grace of 5 more minutes to sob until I wish I had never met you and never felt this kind of hurt. 5 more minutes to remember how it felt to be loved by someone who felt like forever. 5 more minutes to love you, and 5 more minutes to appreciate the past before I leave it all in the dust from my car, running every stop sign in this town in my desperate attempt to escape you.

5 minutes to become the person that I wish had saved me so many years ago. Only 5 more minutes in this pathetic excuse of a confession, of an apology. Except this time, I don't know why I'm sorry.

Only 5 more. 

When I watch you leave for the last time, it hurts just as much as the very first time. This emptiness becomes even emptier. I didn't know that was even possible. My heart beats with cold, unmotivated pumps. Gray and dead inside this cavern.

Something changed in you, and then it died in me, and I hope it's for the last time.

But I know a part of me, the part I despise will hang on to the few remaining fragments of the old you for the rest of my life. 

I want to move on, but I am weak.

And because I am weak, I know that I never, ever, want to fall in love again. 

I know I am weak, and I know I have to write this.

And so while the sun sets on my last day with us here, I watch the shadows on the wall grow longer and more wounding, and I try not to delve into feelings that have been nonexistent since 2001. I try not to think about how quickly time has passed for me. I try not to think about how you threw out every birthday present I had ever given to you. I try not to think about how much it hurt that you couldn't even bring yourself to stand in the same elevator as me. And when I delete all of my social media, know that I'm frantically trying to escape any and every thought of you. 

So this is it. This is the last time I'll speak to you. This is the ultimate farewell to someone who let go of me years ago. I have carried you with my guilt, regrets, and heartbreak on my shoulders since I was 19, but I'm 22 now and will never see you again. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to hurt anymore, but I really, really don't know how not to. Because hanging on to you suffocates me in my sleep every night, but if I let go of you, then you're gone, and you were the only thing I've ever really known.

You've always known that I hated goodbyes, and I hate this one so much more because I don't want to have to live through you leaving me again. 

But this is it. This is goodbye. This is goodbye to a love that I know will never really leave but I'm forcing it to go, to a love that was never really real but made everything else stand in its shadows. Maybe in a different lifetime, things could've ended differently. I guess I will never know. 

So please, if you think of me, think of me being happy.