I spent years admiring your beauty and all of the little things you did for me. When I fell for you, I fell hard and I fell fast. I was able to spend hours upon hours in your company and I would never get bored or uninterested. I watched you grow and helped shape you into what I thought was a kind and caring individual. I helped you, guided you and most importantly, I believed in you.

I believed it every time you told me you'd never hurt me the way that they did, I believed it every time you told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world, I believed every lie I was fed when the biggest lie of all was that you loved me. I believed you cared. I believed I was the one and I believed that when I was with you I had it all. I had the happiness and the smiles, I had the fairy tale ending that most people couldn't even dream of. I never realized that, despite you lying to me, I was lying to myself all along.

I made countless excuses for your actions and lied to cover up the way that you treated me, all because I was ashamed to say I ever loved someone like you. How could I fall in love with someone so cruel and not see it? How could I fall in love with a liar whose greatest power was manipulation? How could I put my fate into someone else's hands who molded it to satisfy her own selfish needs? I almost let you ruin love for me. The taste you left in my mouth was the equivalent to poison. The gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach was strong enough to bring me to my knees. The words "I love you" were like nails to a chalkboard and I cracked. I allowed you to break me into hundreds of little pieces and let life pour out of me. I surrendered to your sadness and sadistic ways, while all along I didn't realize I was slowly killing myself.

It took me a while to begin building myself up again and although I'm not there fully, I'm making my way. One thing I refuse to do is let the taste you left in my mouth define what my future looks like. I refuse to let you ruin my idea of love and what it means to love with all that I am. I refuse to let my past define my present, and most importantly my future. I want the endless laughs until my cheeks hurt, I want to stay awake cuddling until 2 AM with no lights or TV on, I want to take silly pictures and caption them with things like, "The love of my life" and "You are my sunshine." I want silly arguments over what's for dinner or where our next date will be. I want all the chaos that comes with falling madly in love with a soul so beautiful you have no choice but to cave. And the one thing I refuse to do is let you take that beauty from me–you never deserved that kind of love or that power.