You Will Not Get The Best Of Me

Heartbreak is painfully unfair.

We were once equals in our love. There was no unbalanced power or outweighing of someone’s feelings. There were no silly mind games we needed to play with each other. There were no words used as weapons, only words used as music to serenade our souls. It always felt too good to be true. And it was.

Now our relationship is reduced to a burning pile of memories that you set on fire through your unjustified doubt. It seems so unfair that I wake up every morning with a sinking feeling in my heart that clings to me for the remainder of the day while you live without this gut-wrenching wound. While you remain blissfully unaware of the true hell in which I exist.

You do not get to walk away with the best of me with while I walk away with little more than your cruel words and my severed heart. I feel hopelessly hollow because of what you have done to me. How can you walk away like I was a meaningless summer breeze that passed through your life? But I will not allow you to suck the joy out of me. I won’t let you make me lifeless and miserable any longer.

You do not have the right to delegate how many times I laugh today. I will take back my power and find the light that shines from within me, that burns even brighter in your absence.

You do not get to go down in my history as the one who made me whole; that is not a title you have the right to keep. You do not deserve everything that I left you to associate me with: compassion, love, and understanding. I gave you all that I had to give and you did not appreciate it. Someone else will appreciate these things one day.

Instead of leaving you with the soft kindness I offered you in times of your self-crisis, I leave you with knowledge that no one will ever offer you that same kindness again. I leave you with the sad reality that you will not find another who will love your flaws and coddle your issues like I did. I leave you with the overwhelming regret you will feel when you realize that you let go of something that is completely irreplaceable.

You left me without breath immediately, but over time, you will lose yours when you realize what you have done. When you feel hollow without me by your side, when you see how deeply I once cared for you, when you understand that the love I possessed for you is so very rare, you will forget how to breathe and my absence will affect your lungs like instant poison.

I may have suffered a hole in my heart initially, but it is getting smaller every day. Eventually, it will vanish and be filled entirely by the love I will feel for someone who is worthy of my heart’s completion. The hole in your heart will grow with each passing day, and I know you’ll feel empty as the years drag on when you realize that the person you were looking for all along is gone now because you let her go.

You have haunted my dreams with the recollection of your sweet touch and I have awoken with a pounding heart and a woozy head. But in the future, I will haunt your dreams and you will awake with consuming remorse because you will remember how incredible it was to feel my love. The thoughtful gestures, the comforting words from letters I had written you, and the eyes that made you light up with brilliance will trouble your dreams. It won’t be a nightmare. No, it will be the opposite of that. The only problem is that there will be no way to turn it into reality once again.

The nightmare instead will be the sight of me happily in the arms of another man. You will feel jealous as you watch his hand rest on my waist just like yours use to. And when you open your heart for another girl, you will grasp everything that I was to you. When she does not challenge you intellectually or teach you how to appreciate the beauty of life, you will remember how I did those things. But it will be too late because I will love another boy who deserves the best of me.

I gave you the best of me at one point, but now I want to give you regret and a ridiculously high standard to set for every other girl to come. I am growing into a better person — a stronger person — and you will never get to know this version of me. I let myself shed a thousand tears over you and after I let myself cry and be overcome with heartbreak, I can now confidently move on and start anew.

So you will not get the best of me. I once gave you what I thought was the greatest form of myself but now I know that I can be so much more than that. You are a memory to me now and I wouldn’t change the love we once had for each other. But I want you to know that this heartbreak will not consume me for a second longer. I will feel pain inevitably because it has not been enough time for me to feel whole again, but I am through with the overwhelming sadness that you caused. I may be broken, I may be hurt, and I may be a little unsteady right now but I will rise up from this tragedy and be better than this broken heart.

You have stolen a piece of my heart, but it is a part that I can afford to lose — because it is certainly not the best of me.