Sorry is only a word. It is only five letters strung together which falls out of people’s mouths like air. Without thought. Without really considering what sorry even means. Without looking beyond the word and knowing that sorry holds an entire world of promises, of making up, of second chances, of choosing the future over a mistake.

Sorry is easy, is thoughtless, is a reflex. 

And silly, reckless boy, sorry doesn’t change the past. Sorry doesn’t rewrite history; it doesn’t put you back in that situation again and allow you to make the better choice. Sorry doesn’t scrape out the part of her mind which replays that moment in her head on a loop, or silence the voice which screams at her that she wasn’t enough. Sorry doesn’t dry her tears or keep the darkness from suffocating her. Sorry doesn’t mend her heart; it merely covers it in tape and glue.

But it still bleeds, it still hurts, it still feels hollow.

Sorry doesn’t save her. 

And that’s what she wants, when you look at her and apologize for the hundredth time and get mad at her for still hurting; she just wants you to un-do it. She wants your lips to not belong to someone else, she wants your fingertips to not be stained with her skin, she wants that look she thought was reserved for only her, to not be engraved on that girls mind, too. She wants to stop filling in the blanks you created because you’re afraid what the details will mean for you. She wants to stop seeing your bodies colliding and picturing the texts you sent. She wants to stop feelings as if the walls are closing in and she will never find a way out.

She wants to stop her feelings from racing between acceptance and anger and intense pain. She wants to stop thinking she is healing, when all she is doing is burying it to make it easier for YOU to be around her. She wants to stop falling into the hole which questions everything you told her when you finally confessed, she wants to stop finding inconsistencies in your stories, even when there are none. She wants to stop ruining those fleeting moments when you feel like the couple you used to be, because an image or a thought flashes through her mind and suddenly she realizes you aren’t, you might never be.

She wants to stop feeling like a burden because of the pain you caused her, she wants to just forget, she wants sorry to be enough, but it won’t be. It can’t be.

So don’t get mad at her because you’ve apologized. Don’t see forgiveness as something which is deserved. Don’t think the word sorry erases your crimes or makes her see you in the same light.

Don’t keep saying the word until it means nothing; don’t keep expecting it to fix everything. 

Because it won’t.

Because the truth is, trust won’t be earned until you find yourself in that situation again and choose the right path, choose her. Trust won’t be given until she knows you’re capable of putting the both of you before your desires and needs. Trust won’t be given until you explain who a girl is or show her a text before she has to ask. Trust won’t be there until your defensiveness isn’t, until you realize what you’ve done. Until you accept that when you break someone like that, when you shatter someone’s trust, you have to start from the beginning. You have to be transparent; you have to be an open book.

Because your name and your love was written on every page of hers.

Because she counted on you.

Because she chose you every single day, even when you didn’t choose her.

And the sad part is, she will keep choosing you, even when she is too broken to find a way back.