I Was Never Searching For You, I Was Searching For Me

I sat in the corner on a rainy day and scrolled through the pictures on my phone and stopped my finger at yours. Your blue eyes were looking away and your smile was the one you always wore. It was just like I remembered you. Then more photos filled the tiny lite screen, one after another, showing me the familiar face, the familiar laugh, the familiar deep blue eyes that always stared so intently at me. It brought me back in time to a place where the perfect being had fallen in love with the broken soul.

You used to look at me was as if I was the first girl you’ve ever laid eyes on; your eyes would glow and light up. I always called them “smiley eyes” because even if you weren’t smiling I could tell you were happy, always. You used to smile at me as if you were a little boy and after hours of searching, you had finally found the perfect sea shell in the middle of the washed up shore. You were not the guy who toyed around and searched for the next girl to fuck; you were not the guy who ran laps and lifted weights just so he could finally feel some worth; you were not the guy who did things for fame or attention or just to maybe have a bit of glory. No. You were my prince charming. Dark hair and blue eyes, you were everything every little girl would have dreamed of.

You were the kind of guy who loved other people more than you loved yourself, the kind of guy who sat in the back, always ready to stand for the truth, always ready to encourage, the kind of guy everyone knew deserved more but gave up everything just to be himself. You were perfect and the only thing that was ever wrong with you was that when you met me, you felt as if you had met the one. You called me perfect. You ran to tell everyone you knew that you had finally found “her.” You prayed to God every night to see if God had thought the same. You couldn’t get me out of your head because in your mind I was your perfect girl…but I was so far from that.

The way I used to look at you was in fear that maybe you would judge my flaws. The way I used to speak to you was as if I was about to say something wrong. The way I used to smile at you was as if I was a little girl who had found broken shells all her life and finally found a perfect one and didn’t know what to do with it. I was the girl every boy dreamed of fucking, just once. I was the girl who tore down other people’s identities so that maybe they could see what I saw in myself. I was the girl that knew she deserved more but settled for the same shitty life because I was comfortable in it. I was so unbelievably messed up and when I met you I knew I was going to break your heart. I was going to break it because I would never know how to love someone like you. I was going to break it because I didn’t want to change my life and find out what was on the other side. I was going to break it because I would never live up to your expectation and all you would have would be disappointments.

So I did. I broke your heart. Because I believed people like me would never be happy with someone like you and perhaps we lived in a somewhat parallel life where our lives never touched, they just ran side by side. Perhaps I lived in world with cruel people and messed up relationships and you lived in one where everyone was pure and everyone was perfect. You deserved better, I always knew that, and I deserved nothing. I looked at your smile one last time and now that a year has passed, I realized that ever since we ended, I tried so hard to be like you, to one day see life the way you did, to one day cross the line into your world. I tried so hard to fix my flaws and fill the large gaps in my heart. I tried so hard to fight for purity, for truth. But I failed, again and again. I got so close to the line only to fall back into the life I had always known.

I failed to realize that I will always be stuck in this one and you will always be stuck in that one. I failed to realize that neither of us would be bold enough to step over the fine line of fucked up and perfect. I failed to realize that I never actually loved you. Your perfection in your appearance and personality did not touch my heart, it did not move it or change it. I failed to realize that after all this time ,I was not searching for you but for me. I was searching for something so unbelievably real in this false world. I was not searching for prince charming; I was searching for a savior, someone who would hold me and accept me as I was no matter what world I lived in. I was searching for my knight in shining armor who took my hand and just wanted me to be me; someone who made my heart laugh as if the broken shells were the best pieces in the world. I was searching for someone more than you. I wasn’t searching for perfect; I was searching for a storm.