Winter ❄️

I met you in the winter. It all started because I was just being who I am and going around talking to strangers. And you liked that. The next thing I knew, talking to a stranger turned into talking to my best friend in the whole world. Day after day, not an hour went by that your name didn’t pop up on my screen. Stranger turned into friend, friend turned into like, like turned into love, love turned into infatuation, and then I was hooked. From the moment I realized how much you meant to me there wasn’t anything that anyone could say or do that would turn me away from you. I had fallen, and hard. Two years went by with me loving you and loving you and loving you some more but you didn’t love back. Yes, you loved me. I was your best friend, but did you need me the way I needed you? No. Did you want me the way I wanted you? No. And I don’t blame you. I was on a different level, one that I could never put into words, one that I could never tell anyone about. I was just your best friend and you were the love of my life.

You had a crush, it broke my heart but I kept on being there. You had sex with him, it broke my heart but I kept on being there. You had sex with him again, it broke my heart but I kept on being there. You forgot to call or text or check up on me for weeks at a time, it broke my heart but I kept on being there. Through two pregnancy scares and multiple tear filled phone calls to reassure you that it was him who wasn’t good enough for you, you continued to break my heart and I continued to be there. Playlists filled with songs about how you broke my heart. My phone filled with notes about how you broke my heart. My eyes overflowed with tears because you broke my heart. But you just kept on breaking. And I just kept on being there. Because that was all I knew to do, it was all I could do. Without you I fell apart. It was unhealthy how much I needed you. When you upset me, I blamed myself, I punished myself, I scarred myself. I tried harder and harder every day for you. When you needed something I came to you, when you wanted something I came to you. I spent my last on you, I lost sleep for you, I cried for you, and prayed for you, bought you things just because you looked at it and said it looked nice; I did everything in my power to make you happy and you just kept on breaking my heart. And I could call myself a victim and blame all this pain on you but is it your fault that you’re hurting someone if you don’t know that they’re hurting? Is it your fault if they fake a smile when you find the perfect guy? Is it your fault if they’re moved to tears every time they’re with you because you’re so beautiful and they know you can never belong to them? Who’s fault is it that the God above created something so beautiful, something so special, something so extraordinary and placed it right in front of me and said “but don’t touch”? Who can I blame for the pain that I experienced day in and day out because of a love that would never be understood by anyone other than myself? I had no one to blame. So winter came again and I made a decision.

I made a decision to give you up. I made a decision to stop being broken and start doing the breaking myself. So I wrote to you. Like I write everything else, I wrote to you about how you didn’t love me, how you ignored me, how you hurt me, about how you didn’t deserve me. I wrote to you about how I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I wrote to you about how I was done. I wrote to you and I told you that I planned to erase you completely from my life and pretend you never existed because erasing pictures must have meant erasing the pain. Instead of being broken I tried to break you. But the sad reality is that I only broke myself more and left you with one less burden.

Winter is still here and it’s the coldest it’s ever been. This winter, I’m not thinking about what I have, I’m thinking about what I lost. I’m not thinking about what is going to be, I’m thinking about what could have been. This winter I’m not falling in love, I’m trying to fall out of it. Because it turns out I’m not made to break but only to be broken. I lost you in the winter.