It’s quite amazing how everything comes full circle. We haven’t spoken, and I’m not sure I want to. Sometimes I remember your fingers in my hair and sometimes I forget your middle name. I don’t know which is worse.
I’ve been better. I hate how we left things. I hate that when you said it was over, you felt like you were setting an already broken vase on the cement, careful not to let the fragments crack beneath your feet. Your hands were cut from all the times you tried to put me back together. I never asked you to.
A lot can happen in a year. I made most of the changes I always talked about doing, but never did. Some things worked out, others didn’t. After the breakup, the friends I had pushed away during our relationship came melting out of the woodwork. You thought I would be lonely. You pitied me in ways no one ever had. I never asked for your sympathy.
I always felt inadequate standing next to you. We were on different wavelengths. I thought I was becoming overbearing, so I stepped back. So did you. You were less than two feet away and I felt like there was an ocean between us, waves pulling us toward opposite shorelines. You always made excuses. I never asked for lies.
I apologized relentlessly for my anxiety and nervous ticks. You let me. I believed things would eventually work out. You told your friends for months leading up to our breakup that you wanted to end things, you just didn’t know how. I was blind to the things going on behind my back. I never asked questions.
I played my own mistakes in my head for months. I know it wasn’t only you. I know you had moved on, but I had lost more than a boyfriend. I had lost a best friend. I had lost the secrets and closeness that came with it. I had thrown myself in river rapids without a lifejacket. I felt that I was drowning and not even you could pull me to safety. The biggest mistake you made is thinking that I needed you. I never needed you. I only needed me. It took a long time to realize that.
Sometimes, I’ll see you around. You’ll walk past as if we don’t know each other and you’re right; you don’t know me. I was never broken. I was never your project. I was stronger than you ever gave me credit for. My demons were never your responsibility. You thought you had me figured out. You only grazed the surface.
