You Tried To Destroy Me (But You Failed)

It’s been two years since I met you. Two years since I made that beautiful mistake of loving you for the person that you weren’t.

Sometimes I wish that I could go back in time, just to go back to the day that I was bored enough to download a (godawful) dating app. I should have stopped right there, but I found you. I remember initially thinking, “He seems mysterious…kind of cute…GO FOR IT.”

A few months later, between my constant denial and what I thought was your way of showing me love, I was losing myself more and more with each day that passed by. It started off with innocent jokes about my weight, like “Do you really think that you should eat that last slice?” to us going on the romantic dates that I would always plan and you saying, “Why are you so dressed up? It’s not like you’re going to impress anyone.”

Then came to the night where you got so angry with me because I accused you of cheating (which you did) that you would hit me. Crazily, each time I would laugh it off and each time I was digging my own grave.

I tried to convince myself that I was strong. At least that’s what my mom would tell me. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been teased before or I’ve never been told that I wasn’t special before. Hell, it’s not as if I was never told that no one would ever love me, and I accepted that.

The thing was, after a while, you start to get numb to the shit. It almost seemed as though I didn’t really have a choice because I was always surrounded your negativity—a dark cloud of some sort that (due to my vivid imagination) would always follow me with your maniacal laughter. You knew that I had nowhere to go and if even if I did, you knew that I still wouldn’t leave because you “loved” me.

I thought that you were my way to happiness—that you wouldn’t add any more shit to the pile that I already had trailing behind me. I thought that you would be my final knight in shining armor.

From what you told me, we had a similar past. You used to hang around the wrong people, and so did I.

You promised me that you would always protect me. You promised me that you would never hurt me or take advantage of me. You promised me that if anything else were to fail, you would be there to help pick up the pieces.

That was never the case, because I would soon find out that you had your own agenda. Unfortunately for me, I love HARD—or unconditionally, if you will. I believed you wholeheartedly, with every breath in my body.

Yet you managed to break every single promise. It’s sad to think that it took your best friend to approach me with pure pity to find out that we were a lie, a mere fantasy in my head. I could have just died of shame after finding out all you had done. The infidelity, the miscarriage, the stress, the abuse, the lack of appreciation.

This was it—the last damn straw. I had nothing left to give you because you had taken it all. I was your safety net. I amounted to nothing in the end. You confirmed that when I told you I knew everything, and you walked past me and dryly said, “So? You can get out of my house now.”

You promised that you would destroy me if it was the last thing you would do. You did everything in your power to slander my name, to make sure that no one would want me, and for a while, I thought you had won. I’m here to say that you didn’t. I got a new apartment in a decent part of town, went back to school, started a new job, and found love again. Most importantly, I found myself and I thank you for bringing me to my lowest point so that I could get to my highest point one day.

Goddamn, I’m invincible.