An Open Letter To The Girl Who Ruined My Life

I feel like I know you. You’re mentally ingrained in my mind: your face, the clothes you wear, I’ve even thought about what you look like naked, if your body curves in ways mine doesn’t. I’ve imagined how your voice sounds as it leaves your lips and I’ve thought about how your laugh rumbles out of your stomach. I’ve thought about what it would be like to kiss you, if it would be better than kissing me. If it would be worth it.

I know your social media pages like the back of my hand. Silly girl, keeping something like that public when you choose to do what you want with whom you want, with people who don’t belong to you. When you have someone of your own. I spent an entire day on there once, obsessively scrolling, feeling my anxiety rising. Feeling that awful gut-wrenching hollow like someone was dishing my insides out.

I needed answers, even though deep down, I already knew them all.

I figured it out. You out. Like someone kept handing me clues to my own downfall. My own nightmare. He told me it was a mistake. He told me you started flirting with him. He told me you kissed a “few times.” He told me you invited him back to your hotel room.

And I can see it. All of it. Like I was there. Sometimes I dream I’m trapped against the wall, staring at the two of you in bed together, him propped up on his side and you curled into his body. I see your mouth grazing the parts of his body that belong to me. And when I wake up, I hate you all over again.

I hate that you live in me now. I hate that you are running in my veins and stalking my nightmares. I hate that you are the face of so many awful girls on television who try to steal someone else’s man. I hate that I see you when I look at my reflection and wonder what you have that I don’t.

And the worst part is, you don’t even know me. We have never met or spoken. I have probably never entered your head when you have never left mine. You don’t know that you took something from me, something it took me years to master, to grow, to keep. My confidence, my ability to accept love. My ability to trust. My belief that I am worthy.

I have many names for you but I still can’t bring myself to say the one your mother gave you. It doesn’t sit right on tongue; it gets trapped somewhere between my heart and my throat. But it’s there, inside me. Pulling apart the strings which are barely holding me together.

And on my worst days, those where I am hurting and vulnerable and unable to control my thoughts, I hope someone pulls you apart too. I hope you begin to unravel.