What I Regret Not Saying To You When I Had The Chance

I guess I knew that in a lot of ways, you were just lonely as me.

For the longest time, I watched you from where you presented yourself as withdrawn and introverted and it made me ache inside, as though I in some way could be the thing that would make you normal again.

I was drawn to your sadness in a big way, and after we got past the first year, I realised what I wanted in you, was more than anything you were willing to offer.

We worked, yet at the same time we didn’t. Two total opposites who couldn’t function without one another.

At first it was fun. It was exciting and colourful and extravagant and everything about you made me glow. But I was missing a huge and significant part of a relationship that I couldn’t seem to see past. You’d told me you didn’t want to give it to me, and I understood – what I wasn’t expecting was what came next. In a matter of slow, hopeless moments, you gave me the impression that you wanted me, too.

Every time you stared at me a little too long, or held me in the freezing cold and pressed your lips against my head. Every time you crawled into bed with me and drew breath against my neck, or pushed yourself against me and told me I was all you needed. You made me believe that there was something there that I had held out for forever.

You made me think I wasn’t insane, by the way your hands moved over me and touched me and explored places I had held aside for somebody I adored.

You told me things that nobody knew, and I found myself holding them closer than anything else I’d ever been told.

You made me feel so full and happy and blindingly terrified, and I wanted you to be everything that I’d never had before.

But what you don’t know is that every time you told me I looked amazing, I stuck my fingers down my throat and tried to ensure I’d stay that way for you.

What you don’t know is that my dress size changed and my skin ached and my body was exhausted from trying to be something I thought you wanted.

What you don’t know is that you left me lonely and empty, and somehow forever feeling as though it was me who owed you an apology.

What you don’t know, is that when you told people the things that you’d done to me in the quiet of a barely-lit bedroom, I felt like it was my fault.

What you don’t know, is that every time you kissed me, touched me, looked at me with your lust-coated eyes, you lied to me. And what you don’t know is how I laid in the dark next to you while you slept, and sobbed over all the things you took from me, because I finally knew how little you cared.
What you don’t know is that I was never cut out to be your plaything. And I don’t want to apologise for it anymore.