One night and everything changed suddenly you were like every other person who had ever hurt me or lied to me or led me on.

I didn’t want you to be that person.

The truth revealed itself like some storm hitting and I was caught in the eye of it. It was like some hurricane and after it blew through I was standing there with every broken piece of the destruction you caused trying so hard to just build myself back up.

But the hardest part about building yourself back up is when you’re so good at pretending things didn’t hurt you in the first place, no one realizes. No one realizes how much you are just so hung up over the past you thought would lead to a different future.

I truly believed things would play out differently than they did. Or maybe that’s what I told myself and wanted to believe. Maybe I looked for every reason to lead myself to that conclusion. We see the signs we want to in life, not the ones that are right in front of us sometimes.

I believed you cared. I believed every text was because you wanted to talk to me not because you were bored. I believed every tag was because you were thinking of me and every snap you wanted me to know that. I believed every like was an indication of how you felt but maybe I was creating signs I wanted to see.

Maybe the time we spent together was me creating this story I wanted so badly to be accurate but not your reality.

But as much as I pin this on me reading all the wrong signs, I can’t blame myself entirely. Because you made me think you felt these things and you didn’t bother to tell me anything different for so long. So as I ran over details in moments of your confusion, I’m left wondering maybe there was a moment or two where you cared. There had to be. I couldn’t have been the only one feeling that.

Maybe I’m crazy for thinking all these things and thinking something was there. Because I thought you felt it too. A connection I couldn’t explain. A common ground I thought we were both standing on steadily.

But then the ground I thought was steady began to shake.

And if a color could define you and me, I’d pick gray. But everything about me is black and white, so when you threw gray into it and mixed signals and things that weren’t clear, I was trying simply to make sense of it all.

I was trying so hard to understand things like attention one moment, then ignoring me the next. I was trying so hard to understand when I ignore one snap why were three more sent. Were you trying to get my attention? Because you always had it. Were you trying to win my heart because the truth is it was always yours to have if it chose? But you’d choose one moment just to not be consistent with it. Everything about you was inconsistent and confusing and threw me for a loop in ways only rides could.

Maybe it was just a game to you. Maybe you liked knowing how high someone would jump when you told them too. Maybe in the midst of trying to figure out things you couldn’t control in your own life, you liked knowing there was someone you could. You liked knowing someone loved you when regardless of how you treated them.

You liked the attention. You liked the ego boost.

And I can’t blame you for it. I get it. We all need someone sometimes. We all use people sometimes.

But you built yourself up at the cost of knocking me down.

You were using me and taking advantage of me and I saw it. I’m not naive or stupid I just believe in the people I care about and honestly, I never stopped believing you were a good despite every bad side you showed of yourself.

I saw the person I fell for in glimpses. Which made me tolerate the BS.

I can’t sit here and say I’m angry or hate you.

I meant it when I told you I loved you, I just wish you would have loved me back.

And I know someone will get all the good you have to give. You’ll love someone wholeheartedly the same way I did you only they’ll get your best. And it will kill me as I’m left wondering why it couldn’t be me or what it was I lacked.

We both deserve someone great. I deserve better and you deserve someone you’re more sure of. I just kept holding on, wishing it would be you at the end of all of this. And that’s what hurts the most, believing in someone that much, holding onto that much faith, only to realize how wrong you were about everything.