Maria Monrovia

I’m the girl everyone leaves. The one they promise the world to before they disappear. The one they say they love, they swear, their words like honey laced with poison. I’m the girl who always ends up alone.

Maybe the truth is that I want to give you that second chance — a small part of me longs to — but I can’t be that person anymore. Because people don’t change even when they promise to, and I can’t keep holding onto hope when all signs point to the cold, hard truth: you already hurt me once, and pretending that you won’t do it again is just me fooling myself.

What do you do when the person who breaks your heart was the person who once made you feel whole? How do you put yourself together again when you’re always left feeling like something is missing?

Be with someone who accepts every version of yourself — from sunny days to hurricane, the good and the bad. Who doesn’t see you as any less when you feel like you are, who still holds you on a pedestal when you feel small. Who doesn’t see your bad days as problems but just little bumps along the road that you can maneuver together — who stands beside you and never lets go.

And the truth is, once she leaves, you’ll even miss the bad things. The fights, the complications, all the little quirks that once drove you crazy. Because you never realize what you have until it’s already walking out the door, and it doesn’t matter how much you beg for it back. Once she’s done, she’s done.

You grew distant. So did I. Sometimes we’d go days without saying anything at all. It felt like there was something hiding in that silence, but I was never able to put my finger on it. I think there are some things I’ll never be able to describe in words.

I was never supposed to be the other woman. I was too good for that, I told myself. If I couldn’t be someone’s number one, I didn’t want to be theirs at all. Except somehow, it happened anyway.

You weren’t my boyfriend, but you still pretended like you were, even though you scoffed at the label and said we were just “doing us”.