One of my favorites things in this world is finding old pieces that I have written. Four, almost five years ago, I wrote this prose piece. A naive 16-year-old who made up fictional stories in her mind; this is one of those stories. I believed everything revolved around love, even if I would never find it and that love is usually followed with heartbreak. Honestly, I wish I could remember what I was thinking or what was going on whenever I decided to throw these words onto a sheet of paper, but if I know myself, it was simply just a naive 16-year-old making up stories again.

So, here it is. Honestly, though, who hurt me?

* * *

The scariest thing that we will ever experience in this existence is the knowledge that there will always be someone better than you. Just when he tells you that he has never been so madly in love with anyone else in his 23 years of living, he will meet this better version of you.

You'll first notice her beauty, but he'll first notice her soul and she will first notice how he values that. In a matter of time, no less than 4 weeks but no more than 6, you'll be nothing more than a history lesson. Only you're in the section of the history book that the class never makes it too. The less important part.

But to him, you were once important. He just forgets to think of that because he is too busy thinking of her; this new emerald that he has captured. You were just a stone that he picked up along the way.

He'll drag the goodbye out not knowing that he is removing every bone that has been holding you together. Slowly taking you apart rib by rib until breathing becomes too much. It'll remind you of the first time that you met him. It hurt to breathe then as well, only that time he only took your breath away for a few moments. This time he has stolen it as if it has always belonged to him and he has no intentions of allowing it to be yours again.

He'll tell you he is sorry, and it won't be a lie. You'll tell him not to apologize because nobody should have to apologize for who they love. Even though it isn't you that he loves anymore.

The words 'I love you' will then become no more than three words that feel as empty as the feeling you felt when he shut your passenger door for the last time. Or the feeling that you felt whenever he didn't look back.

Next, 'I love you' becomes the scars on your forearm and the alcohol on your lips as you kiss strangers hoping desperately to find him because you still search for him in everyone. Everyone.

But how will you ever find him when he's not even him anymore? He was always the better version of himself. Now he is hardly even a version of himself. It hurts.

The voices that you cry yourself to sleep to every night begin to sound more and more like him. But only because you listened to the last voicemail that he left you two days before he decided his voice wasn't the one meant to be on your phone. You listen to it over and over and over again, hoping that it will fix you. But how can it fix you when it is the same voice that has broken you?

Eventually, the tears will become faded smoke from empty lungs. You'll notice that you haven't cried in weeks. Not because you don't want to, but because you can't. You can't feel anything.

But then you see him with her at the coffee shop where he first met you, and where he first met her. They sit in the corner booth next to the window where you first realize that you loved him, and where you sat as you realized that he no longer loved you.

That's when it hits you.

Your tears become rain and the rain becomes a storm and the storm destroys everything that you thought was keeping you together. You'll wish you were numb. You'll wish that you could no longer feel.

He has no idea that he is killing you with every movement that he makes. Every day the ground feels like burning coal and the air feels like toxic gas, and every time that you breath it in, you wish that it just would be. That it would end the pain, but he is that pain and he has no end.

He is the voice that you are holding and he is the voice that is telling you to pull the trigger. But you would never do that because it would mean leaving him, even though he is already gone.

You want to move on. You try to even. But every left turn and every midnight drive reminds you of when he was making that drive with you. You can still smell his scent lingering on your passenger seat.

Guy after guy will sit in that seat. Guy after guy will leave. They'll tell you that they can't live up to all that you expect them to be. You expect them to be him.

You still love him. You need to move on. But moving on means discovering your better version of yourself. And finding the better version of yourself means letting go. And letting go means forgetting. So, you deleted his voicemail and forgot his scent. You began searching for you.

You found you.