It was always all about you. It always will be all about you. I feel sorry for the future girls who will have to endure the emotional roller coaster I've been on. Everything started off so well, which I now know is because you've gotten manipulation down to a science. We met in the gym where you complimented my strength, I instantly fell for your charm, and the rest is history. I should've noticed your constant need for validation from me. How inflated your ego was. The way every conversation somehow ended up with you as the subject. That you hadn't had a "real" relationship in five years but rather a series of random hookups because you're terrified of commitment. Maybe I did notice these things, but they didn't come off as red flags because I had already fallen for you...and I still haven't gotten myself back up.

What I failed to realize is that narcissists are incapable of forming meaningful relationships, of feeling compassion, of loving. They seek out emotionally vulnerable people and become leeches, draining the energy of their prey until their ego has been boosted enough to last while they find their next victim. I'm not sure how you sensed by insecurity since I mask it with the outward appearance of strength that comes with being a bodybuilder, but you sure as hell capitalized on it. I questioned every sentence before it left my mouth, wondering if it might offend you or otherwise make you no longer want to be with me. I questioned whether my body was good enough for you and even contemplated skipping meals to loose weight, something that hadn't crossed my mind since the depths of my battle with anorexia. Even though you're deeply insecure yourself, you're extremely confident in your ability to play people to get what you want: an emotionless shell of a person who exists only to make you feel better about yourself.

Even so, I can't find it in me to blame you or be angry with you. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your intention wasn't to hurt me. I want to believe that you're a good person who's just misguided and only knows how to deal with your intense self-hatred by seeking constant reassurance that you aren't a terrible person. You couldn't even love yourself, so you definitely weren't ready to love anyone else.

But, somehow, I still thank you. You made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do on my journey to self love. You showed me that, even though I've been feeling extremely empowered lately for going against social norms regarding women and weightlifting, I still have an intense desire to please everyone around me. I watched passively as you destroyed the very essence of my being, yet still was more concerned with making you need me than with my own mental health. The only person I'm required to please is myself, and I need to get my mind to a place of strength equal to that of my body and truly understand that. My compulsion to fix people got the best of me with you - maybe because I'm a little selfish, too. I wanted to help you like yourself again and stop drinking so much to numb your intense emotions. I wanted to help you feel secure enough in your identity that you wouldn't feel the need to brag and seek validation from everyone around you. I wanted you to realize that I was what you were looking for all along, the antidote to all of your problems. But some people just don't want to be fixed, and you're one of them. I was expending all of my energy trying to be your only one and help you find yourself that I started to lose my identity. I became a ghost of myself and a shadow of you, which was your plan all along; to make me forget who I was so that all I would know was you, so that I would be too dependent on you to leave.

So, to the boy who couldn't love me: I sincerely hope you learn how to love yourself so you can one day experience the happiness of reciprocating that feeling towards someone else, and I thank you for opening my eyes to how much of my confidence stems from the approval of others. I wish you the very best in life.