I Chose To Get Better On My Own

I wish I could go back to the times when your pictures on my newsfeed used to make me think, “Not in a million years!” How unusual it is when someone who you wouldn’t look at twice suddenly becomes the person who you can’t take your eyes off of. How they went from being a name to the only name that is on your lips.

Since then, so much has happened. The new me doesn’t even come close to comparing to who I was before you.

But you didn’t change me nor did you make me better. You’re the reason I chose to change. You’re the reason I learned how flawed I was.

You’re the reason I decided to make myself better.

You didn’t want to listen to everything I had to say by rolling your eyes and sighing “Oh my God!” When you began to turn your back on me, I stopped choosing to follow you. I stepped out of your shadow.

When you stopped answering my questions, you gave me all my answers as I taught myself new ways of hearing the truth from your closed mouth. I learned to be strong when your eyes stopped meeting mine, when your hands stopped reaching for mine and when your face no longer had the same look like it did on mine.  

You were the knife I used to make my edges sharper so I can define myself as a woman who is not incomplete without a man by her side. Into someone who is not scared to repair herself no matter how painful it is to re-stitch her wounds. I did not stop living my life just because you were no longer a part of it. I didn’t give up on life. I only gave up on you.

I forced myself every day to wake up with a thought that made me happy, happier than any thoughts of you. And slowly, I began accomplishing so much after I put myself first and making sure you will never have a place next to me. I fuelled every anger and memory surrounding you to open places I didn’t even realize I had locked to accommodate you.   

I willed my heart to look forward to something even if it was meeting a new friend or catching up on the latest Game of Thrones. I never stopped expecting myself to be happy just because I stopped expecting it from you.  

I erased the overanalyzing puzzles of how you might have shown me that I meant something to you. I accepted that everything about you was, in fact, a puzzle. A guessing game that didn’t come with any answers only endless clues.

Love is not a journey filled with risky stops and detours that only lead you back to where you started. It is a struggle, yes, but at some point, that struggle and that journey have an end that makes the pain feel like a sweet blessing in disguise.  

You have always been the same bump that I kept hitting every time. I had no idea how to move around you until now.

So I decided to take myself to a new place. A place where the only words that matter are the ones that come from my mouth. The only messages that I will answer are the ones that you don’t send. A place where the only thing I want to overanalyze over and over again is how I can keep myself on a road that doesn’t lead back to you.  

You and I were stuck on the same chapter of you hitting me up whenever you needed me but never actually wanted me. You asking me out when I was the last resort and you coming back to me because I was always too hopeful to never want to move from the spot where I knew you would always find me without even needing to search for me.

Today, I decided to go to a place where I know you can never reach me.

I wish I could take myself back to the days when I thought I was too good for you.

Because, it turned out, I was.