I thought I knew it all. My whole life, love ran through my mind as if it was the epitome of my being as if it was every fiber that created who I was and what I stood for. But, no, it was you. You were every atom of my being and every definition of love in every language, known and also not discovered yet.

Bear, that birthday was something that I felt so close to me. You, becoming mine, left something in me. It left shards of an extra heart that made me love you so deeply and immensely, I felt my bones shake and rattle with enticement and an earthly feeling of being grounded in my understanding of love. And, when you left me, for whatever one of your reasons, that ground shattered and my bones creaked with loneliness and self-doubt. You were everything I asked from the world, and without that, without my sense of accomplishment and self-worth, I was nothing. Without you, I was hollow, filled with nothing but broken love and scattered tears that stained every article of clothing of mine and stained all the skin I wore, and my friends swore my streaks of tears had become permanently tattooed on my cheeks.

You made my family complete. My father was at ease with you, having discussions of games because you're both unbelievably huge nerds, and for that, I was thankful that I had to suffer about listening to your game talk. Thinking about it now, I'd do anything to hear you two talk about your games on a laptop screen and bicker about Titanfall. I'd do anything to hear the sounds of my family accepting you and loving you as their own; just as I did.

Moving on was always described in books as intolerable and insufferable, and sometimes it was inevitable. You mourn what you loved, and I have always mourned you. I mourn the way you said you loved me and the way you'd smile, and I mourn our small fights and ignorant silences. I'd rather have you and your angry silence than not have you at all. You were my sense of relaxation and now I hear pointless conversations that remind me of you and my shoulders tense and my mouth dries up.

I remember the tears. The sorrow I felt and the sorrow I saw in myself. A sore throat and puffy eyes four days a week and I'd still go back to it; but now, growing up and growing older I've seen love and I'll see it again. I know that pieces of you linger in the cracks of my bones and in my blood stream and I know that they will stay until I am gone and away from the world, just as you are away from mine. I remember going weeks, hating myself and my mother was so distraught, she was afraid. She wasn't afraid of me, but for me, because the little girl she had seen one morning was gone the next, and in the girl's place was a heap of shattered heart shards and thoughts of ending it all.

God, I want you to see. I want you to see what you did, and the damage you caused. You pressured me into deleting and escaping friendships that were so good to me because you were convinced I didn't need them. You threw your insecurities into my arms and I held them willingly, because what was yours was also mine, and I carried the burden of your regrets on my shoulders as if the belonged to me. I'd lost friends and god knows, so many things I held close to me. I had to keep my phone at home when I went out because I was so god damned worried you'd say something, even one word, and I'd crash down into nothing in front of someone. I want you to see that happiness was you. You were the happiness that flowed through my body when you came back, and I wanted so badly to believe that you'd stay. I wanted to believe that you wouldn't hurt me again, but people don't change. You never changed. I changed myself for you. I twisted myself into this thing that lived to please you, and sadly, I must not have succeeded.

In some way, I gave up everything I was and everything I'd come to be to make sure you were okay. But it wasn't you that needed reassurance, it was me. I needed somebody to make sure I was okay, and you weren't there. You couldn't see that our souls were bound together by fate and love alone and that you were me. You were every fucking fiber that was me, and I let you in without even a knock on the door, and you locked me away inside and burned down the house. The house that I had built myself and tried to perfect crumbled down and was only rebuilt with mud and stones again, and again you continued to burn me down.

Now, on this day, I know that I do not need you anymore. I know that the fire I feel when something reminds me of you will slowly burn into a steady flame and that you will go out. Night time will end again, and again will come a new day, and on a new day I will forget you. I am healing and yes the process is so slow and so painful and sometimes I think that moving on isn't worth the pain, but you are not worth the pain. I do not breathe you anymore, I am no longer broken glass, only to be stepped on, splayed across the road. I am a glued together glass bottle and again, I have a new purpose. That purpose is not you. My flowers have grown bigger and more graceful than ever and I am burning down your garden. No more. Enough is enough, and I am enough again.

Don't take this the wrong way. It's taken me a year to get to this point. I am your friend, not your toy.

Special shoutout to Savvy for helping me reword things to condense this.