I’ve had dreams involving you. Some sweet, some anxious. At night I catch myself talking to myself like you’re sitting right beside me. When reality hits, it hurts worse than yours

You were my best friend. I loved you, and I loved us. How did we get to where we are now? Did you always hate me? Did you think I was pathetic? Did I deserve all I was put through? Was it funny twisting me backwards until I couldn’t breathe any longer? Or did the joke wear out when you saw the light leaving my eyes and the fire leave my soul?

I fought so hard to not become my mother. To be someone who would stand strong and would know better than to be used and abused in the same way. And when I became a mother, I promised I would never put my children through the things I had been through. But every lie you told was too beautiful, because the love I had for you set my soul on fire. However, you forgot to nurture the kindling, and were caught tending to other fires instead. In the end, I now cry for the things my children have witnessed the same way my mother did. I stand in the ashes of what once was home to me.

My emotions get the better of me, and there was a time and place where I would have died had you asked me to do so for you. I was there every late night call for that designated driver. Holding you in the middle of the night when your head, heart, and even hands were too heavy. Maybe the blood on my hands helped wear down your stone heart as I beat them bloody to get through to you. But my hands are gone now, stumps left numb where I sacrificed myself for you. I’ve handicapped myself trying to love you.

I wake up and reach across the bed for you. It takes me a minute to recalibrate and realize that you’re not there. You’ll never be there again. And I can never go back. Going back would be like putting your loaded gun to my temple and closing my eyes. I wish you had loved me, and not thought of me as a joke. I believed for a short while in heaven. But I’m not religious. And like our love, heaven is fake

I thought you were my best friend and lover. How could you bear secretly being my biggest bully? How could you bear holding me in your arms as I cried while laughing at me behind my back? How could you tell me those loving words while mocking me to your friends? Was I not pretty or smart enough? Or was I just not the close enough amalgamation of “her” to be accepted by you socially? I was never what you wanted. I was wanted enough for you to try to pin me down when I would try to run from you, but not enough to respect and love me. I’m sorry, you won’t find me at the end of that bottle to soothe your heavy handed mind any longer.

You always confused and hurt me, complexities that I just couldn’t understand at the time lied within you. Drunkenly screaming for me to get out of your house in the middle of the night, but also holding me so tightly like your arms were a cage. Like it you let me go even for a second, I would vanish. And no matter how I tried to stay away, my love for our kin and your soul kept pulling me back to you. I wonder if you had fun pulling at the chains around my heart and I begged and pleaded to be just loved by you. Your love was never based on being in love with me, it was based in possessing me.

You live within my walls, my bed frame, my very DNA. I’m haunted by your touch, the damage done to me and the pleasure also brought upon from it. My brain has become foggy since becoming possessed with the thought of you. You reached into me, pressing and pulling my strings to see how to make me react, how to break me down. When I’m with you, I can only remember all of the damage caused by you. When I’m cleansed of you, you always find a way to haunt me harder than before. I don’t know if I’ll ever truly be free of you. And the more bourbon you drank, the more my blood poured from your hands

It never truly felt like you respected my efforts and love that I had to offer you. Like me even attempting to love you was laughable in your eyes. You were stabbing me in the back, and instead of turning around to look you in the eyes, I covered my eyes and denied that you were ever capable of being so cruel. Treating me as though I’m some tool to appease enough so that you may use me to lift yourself up further. I was building myself to be a rare porcelain vase, and you used me to wipe your feet on and reach towards other pretty things. It hurts knowing I was enough to use and abuse, but never enough for you to love me, respect me as a person, and truly acknowledge and appreciate my efforts. I never doubted your work. But to you, I just sat inside on a computer all day. You never had any appreciation for my efforts and me putting forward what I had to try to save us. I think you were pulling us both under the water the entire time.

Remembering when I was so hopeful about us, all the times we had argued, worked so hard to keep things together, the beautiful, the chaotic., all that was once us and how much I bent myself backwards to make you happy. It burns holes into my soul like I’m burning through each photo of us wondering if you hated me from the very beginning or if you were making fun of me during them. Missing when I had such a deep love for you that was endless, innocent to where I never thought you would never do the things you did to me that you did. But it’s too late, and I loved you until I was running on fumes. You never would fill up the tank, you’d only put just enough in there. You could never be bothered to really go out of your way otherwise. But constantly running on fumes takes its toll. I miss you. I remember the impact on my cheekbone and the way it rattled my head and my brain. I remember the pain in my head for days. I remember the way you pinned me down and shoved me around. I remember the fear, the anger, the sadness.

I miss you.

I miss the lighthearted moments when things seemed brighter and better in life. When there wasn’t so much darkness between us.

But nothing can undo what’s been done. The words that have left our mouths cannot be unsaid, your violence cannot be undone, and my anger and pain will not fade for as long as you would continue to cheat, lie, manipulate, and drag me down. And you were never going to stop for me. I wish you loved me as much as you loved the attention you received from everyone else. I wish you loved me as much as you loved the alcohol. I wish you loved me as much as you loved the parties and bars. And I wish you had seen that I was trying to help you before you had done all of the damage that you did to us. But you didn’t, and my hand was forced. I’ll be strong for my children, but I’ve never felt so broken alone in my life. I still cry at night. I still find myself pretending to talk to a friend to try to figure out where it all went wrong.

I still wake up expecting you to be there.

I still find myself talking to you.