Whether it is a first love or just the one that left the biggest impact, there is no equation, no system that works to determine who leaves you with the most baggage. It can be someone you only knew for a short amount of time; they may be the one to hurt you the most. This is an open letter to the one who hurt me the most.

I thought that it was real. I was happy, and I will never regret the many wonderful memories that we have together. I do not think that it would be healthy to regret those memories. At the time, you were what I needed and what made me happy. I just didn't see the 180 degree turn that was coming. I still do not know the real reason for us going our separate ways, but I do know that I was not treated like I deserved to be treated. I hate how I knew this was not my fault, and yet I still blamed myself. I hate that for months afterward, I would entertain ideas of how I could have been better and how I could have changed myself so that you would have stayed. And that's not healthy. Even now that I have come to terms with what happened and know that there is nothing I could have or should have done to try to get you back, you still creep into my mind every so often. I thought that I had gotten rid of you, but you come back when I least expect you to.

I want to reach out, because despite how you hurt me, I still care. I won't let myself care, though, because I know that the feeling is not mutual. If only for my own good, I cannot reach out to you, and I know that you will not reach out to me. This is how you hurt me the most. The lies you told me every day, the lies that I believed, they all mean nothing now. I will never be able to change who I am. I will never be able to change how much I care for people, even those who do not deserve it. I hope that you find what makes you happy; I hope you find someone who makes you stay. You abandon people so easily. You tell them what they want to hear and then leave when you need to put in work. Nothing is worth the effort to you. But now I know that I should have been worth the effort, and while I may not be able to forget you, at least I have learned from you. It is a fairly stereotypical cliché, but it is true that everyone comes into your life for a reason. I am not supposed to forget you. When you abandoned me I finally learned the lesson that anyone who is truly in love with me will love me for me. I should never worry about how I should act or what I could do to make someone stay. If I feel insecure and try to think of ways to make someone want to stay, then I should be letting them leave.

We all have "the one that we can't forget," and despite the hurt, it is important to know that we remember them for a reason. Now that time has passed and it doesn't hurt so much, I can thank you. This was a lesson that I needed to learn, and one that I will not forget.