What I Would Tell You

It started when you first told me you found a job in a city an hour away. Knowing you were going to be apart from me hurt. We had a plan, you would stay for me since I had 8 months left of school and then the next year I would follow you where ever you wanted to go. You messed up the plan and so I had to make a new one. I planned it out so that it would work I mean you were only an hour away and if I needed you I could see you. Plus I would see you every weekend and once the 8 months was over I could move near you. It hurt but I believed we would survive until you told me you were leaving to work up north.

The day you called, five days before my birthday, I was on top of the world and so excited to see you and spend this amazing weekend with friends. When you said I was going to hate you I had imagined you weren't going to make it this weekend. Yes I would have been upset but I could never hate you but you proved me wrong. When you said you were going up north to work I thought you were joking. To me, you making this decision, that affected both of us yet you made it on your own, crushed me. You knew how hard it was and that it was upsetting you going to work an hour away yet you decided to do this for yourself anyway.

I realize I never told you how upset I was when you moved to a different city but this crushed me. I know that this was something you needed to do and I would never stop you from doing what you truly want to do but this was too much. Everything I had planned, we had planned had shifted. Suddenly I felt I wasn't important anymore.

It took all of my will power not to scream at you that night. I was fuming and I didn't really understand why until recently. You had told me earlier in the year that I was worth staying for and that I was more important than money and being with me was what you wanted most. I began to doubt that after you said you were leaving. I thought that I wasn't as important to you anymore and I felt less and less appreciated. I treated you no less than a king and here you were hurting me and making me feel unimportant. That night, when you told me we had two days until you had to leave I felt my whole world crumbling and there was nothing I could do to stop it. How could everything be so great one minute and falling apart the next. That whole weekend I was so sad but doing my absolute best to put on my best act and be okay. Only two people could have known I was trying so hard to hold myself together, my best friend and you, and my best friend noticed and watched me suffer all weekend while you acted so excited for your new adventure.

When you were gone I felt broken. Talking to you every day and spending hours on the phone at a time tore me to pieces because you were so close yet I couldn't touch you. I couldn't be held by you and I couldn't sleep cuddled up next to you. When you told me you got to come home early I had a momentary feel of relief and excitement until I realized you would have to go back. The fact that you would have to go back possibly multiple times was my last straw. I couldn't go through what I was going through not knowing when it was going to end and with the uncertainty of when you were going to get called away next. I saw what my life was going to be like for the next 8 months and it was going to kill me. Not knowing when you would get the phone call and be swept away from me again. That was when I did it. I was so angry and upset with you and I had so much built up emotion that I acted out. I needed to feel in control and wanted and important and I knew that he would make me feel that way because I had all of that power over him. I texted him and flirted with him and as horrible as it was it made me feel better because I got my control back and I knew it would hurt you. After it had happened I felt awful, I realized that there were so many better ways to deal with my emotions and I felt ashamed.

Do you know what it feels like to feel like you are the most important person to someone and then all of a sudden feel worthless to them. That's what I felt like. I felt worthless to you, like you knew I was something that would always be there for you and I felt unwanted and unimportant to the person that meant the world to me.

After everything that I have gone through I know now why this happened and how to fix it but now it's too late.

I truly am sorry for what I did and what I put you through but I needed to learn this. I needed to learn what my limits were and I needed to learn that what I feel is important and that no one else can tell me how to feel. As crazy as it sounds I did it all for you. I held in all of my negative emotions so that you wouldn't feel hurt and you would never have to feel like anything you did was hurting me although that is exactly what was happening. I protected you because I was emotionally abused. I was taught to only share my feelings if they were positive and to feed off other peoples emotions to know how I should be feeling. I needed conformation on how I was feeling and that I was okay for feeling upset or mad at you but I could never tell you because that would make you feel bad. I was afraid of being the cause of your pain and through my abuse I had learned that if I did anything to upset you, you would yell and you would get more upset for me telling you the way I feel. I wasn't allowed to feel something unless she told me it was what I should be feeling so I learned it was easier to hold in all of my feelings and never let her know and go along with what she said and how she felt. It was so toxic and abusive but I never knew how bad until I was doing the same thing with you and I didn't recognize it or know how to stop it. I am sorry you had to be the one to make me realize that this abuse had affected me worse than I thought and that I needed help to get past it. I am sorry I was never able to tell you this. I'm sorry you think I stopped loving you but I just loved you so much I was afraid that I was going to do something to drive you away and in the end that's what ended up happening.

I was feeling so lonely and betrayed and so angry that I lost control. Everything in my life was out of my control and that made me sick, it drove me crazy. Everything I had known, everything that was concrete and everything I had planned was being questioned from my family to school and now you. I wanted to tell you how I felt but I was afraid of what it was going to do to you and how it would make you feel. I was so worried and concerned with your feelings that I physically felt like I was unable to express mine so I held onto those feelings because I didn’t want you to feel hurt and I tried to push them down and it caused them to explode in one of the worst ways possible. I am even still doing it now because I couldn't tell you how I fully felt on the Friday you came over after work or the Thursday when we said our goodbyes. You hurt me. You made me feel unimportant like I was not a high priority of yours and I know that seems insane because I know you treated me better than anyone ever has so I told myself that I wasn't allowed to feel this way. It made me feel horrible for thinking that you didn't prioritize us especially since what you were doing was important to you and it made you happy and seeing you that happy away from me killed me even more. I would never want to take that away from you and I told myself I would never be the girlfriend that asked her boyfriend to stay for her but I needed you to stay. I know you can't read minds and so you never knew but I needed you to stay for me. I could have lived with you being an hour away but moving to the other side of the province was my breaking point. Seeing you leave and make that choice to be away from me made me feel unwanted and unappreciated but I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to take this away from you and I didn't want you to feel anything but excitement for your job. I completely sunk my feelings and put you above myself even though it cost me my sanity. I beat myself up about what I did for weeks and I have continuously beat myself up about it. I need you to know that I still continuously protected you to this day. I didn't tell you everything because I didn't know how. The way you made me feel after not talking to me when I came up to Nanaimo to try and talk things out hurt so much. So many thoughts had crowded my brain and the fact that you wouldn't even talk to me was killing me inside. I felt destroyed and disgusted by the fact that I hurt the person I love more than anyone in the world that I didn’t want to live anymore. I thought it would be easier if I ended my life because then I couldn't hurt you that way ever again if you would even take me back or if you weren't going to then at least I wouldn’t ever be able to hurt anyone else that way. I didn't even recognize myself anymore and I despised the person I had become and now so many people were going to think that I am that person and this is what I do and I couldn't live with myself knowing that. I started seeing things differently, as in how could that help me die. I tried so hard to push these thoughts out of my head convincing myself that there were people who still loved me and that it would destroy them if I did this. It wasn't until I was driving home the next day that the thoughts finally took over me. I hadn't heard anything from you and I was imagining the worst things of how you thought of me. Every corner I took I kept telling myself if I just don't turn then it will be over with. If I hit the trees then at least I will be punished for what I did but if I go off the other side I will just fall off the cliff and I will be free-falling for a few seconds and then rolling and that will be a for sure way to make sure I'm dead. I was struggling so hard to convince myself to stay alive and then all of a sudden my phone went off. I got a text and it was from you. You had finally answered and said you needed more time but we would talk on Friday. I got a small glimpse of hope that maybe you didn't hate me after all and maybe you wanted to get back together eventually so I made sure to turn all the corners on the way home. You saved me. You saved me and you didn't even know it, I didn't even get to thank you. I thought causing you this pain and losing you over it would have been worse than death and I didn’t want to feel this anymore but you gave me the strength to carry on. I made it to Friday to finally access the situation and how much damage I had caused when you called to say you were going to be a little late. You sounded fairly calm on the phone and it gave me hope that maybe my poor decision didn't cost everything but it turns out I was wrong. When you came over you may not have yelled but you definitely attacked. All of the hurtful things you said to me and when you started gathering your things I felt utterly destroyed. It turns out it was way worse than I thought and after you left, the way you looked, I was completely broken. After falling to my floor, balling my eyes out and barely being able to form words to my friend I thought about that day I thought about driving off that cliff and I wish I had. I wish I had just not taken one of those corners and then I wouldn't be in pain anymore I would be free. But I had to pay for what I did I had to be punished and living with this pain for the rest of my life was my sentence for the crime I had committed. I was never going to get you back and the switch had to be flipped so I did. I turned all of my hurt and brokenness into anger against you. I told myself that you had just come to hurt me back to make me feel pain like how you felt pain and I was mad at you for all of the hurtful things you had said and I used it to start to get over you. To make myself feel that I was better without you even though it was all just a front. I was still so broken and used that brokenness (and a lot of drunkenness) to get under someone else. I wish I didn’t do that now knowing what I know but it happened and I can't change that. I thought you were done with me and that you never wanted to see me ever again since I hadn't heard from you so as if I wasn't already at rock bottom I definitely was now. I was moving on and school had started and I figured I would never hear from you again and then Anna told me that you wanted to call her and my whole body went numb. I never thought you would contact either of us and here you were wanting to talk to her and we had no idea what about and I almost fell to the floor. When she came back and told me what you talked about I couldn’t believe it. And again the feeling of disgust had crawled back in and all of the reasons for being mad at you were gone and I was in the wrong again. How did I end up here twice in less than two weeks. So many things started running through my head that I thought I was going to pass out and then you called. I couldn't answer because I had no idea what to say and I had no idea what you were going to say and all of a sudden that feeling of being out of control came back. When you called the second time I knew I had to answer and I had no idea what was going to happen but this was my way to find out and this time I was going to tell you the truth no matter what and stand up for myself because I did not want to be that person broken to pieces on the floor again. When you said you wanted to come over I was hesitant because I didn’t think you would ever want to see me again and I didn't want it to be a repeat of last time, I was not going to be attacked again but I agreed anyways because seeing you and being close to you was something I wanted to do one last time. When you got here I was shaking. I could barely stand and all I wanted to do was grab you and kiss you but I knew I was in no position to do so, so I focused on untying my shoes instead because no words were able to escape my mouth at that moment. When you said you were here to listen and came over and gave me a hug it was the biggest relief in the world. I felt the heaviest weight lift off my chest because you had touched me and didn’t get disgusted. I felt like I did when you grabbed my hand on our first date almost a year ago. I was overcome with excitement and happiness and I felt like I was back where I belonged. I'm glad we had that one last night and that we were able to say goodbye the proper way although I wish we never had to say goodbye at all. You will forever be in my memories and my heart and I find peace knowing that in some other universe I was never abused and I was able to tell you my feelings and I never made this mistake so we ended up together forever.