This Is Me Finally Learning To Unlove You

It’s been months since you left me. The first time, at least. Since then you’ve come in and out of my life like a revolving door that only I could stop, except that I wouldn’t stop it. In these months that I’ve had bits and pieces of you, I’ve learned more about myself, love, heartbreak, and loss than I have in the rest of my entire life.

At first, I hated you. I’ll admit I ran your name around, talked a little trash to anyone who would listen. I thought it was helping me cope to hate you. I didn’t realize I was just taking the easy way out, because it was easier to say I hated you than admit I loved you and you left. The easy way never really works though. It’s a part-time solution to a long term problem.

But I’m big enough to admit now that I don’t hate you. After everything you did to me, I can’t bring myself to hate you even if I want to. Because when I think about us, all I think about are the good times.

I think about laying in bed with you until the middle of the day after the worst night of your life. I think about playing with your hair, and the night I had to pluck your eyebrows just to put a face mask on. I think about you singing country songs to me in your truck and how much I loved your voice. I think about the night I made you and your buddies dinner and cleaned the dishes afterward, and I remember saying to myself “this is how I want to spend the rest of my life.” I think about Christmas, and New Year’s, and every regular day spent with you just doing laundry or laying around, that somehow felt like the best day ever.

I’m trying to train myself out of that habit though. I’m trying to remember all the bad things. The reasons we didn’t work out, the reasons we’ll never work out. I try to remind myself the night I cried to my mom because you heard a rumor about me, and ignored me for 2 days. I remind myself of the times you said something insensitive and told me to knock my attitude off when I was upset. I remind myself of the times I knew you were cheating because I was so used to it I could tell in the difference of the way you texted me.

On the days I really can’t get you out of my head, I think about the night I saw you with another girl. I think about that whole day feeling horrible because you were ignoring me, I knew something was up but I couldn’t let myself lose you. I think about you lying to me that you weren’t going out, and when I showed up to a party you were there with her. I think about my heart falling out of my chest, gagging in my car because I thought I would puke, wanting to rip my own skin off my body, at the sight of her on your lap. Thinking about it now still makes me feel lower than I ever knew possible.

It’s hard to think about those times anymore. I know now that the bad outweighs the good, but I would do anything to feel the good one last time. To crawl back into your bed and feel you breathing one more time.

I would sell my soul to lose the bad and get back to the way we were before. Before the heartbreak and loss. To be back with you, waking up to your good morning texts, counting down the minutes until my break when I can talk to you again. And to have you just as excited to talk to me. But we’re not those same people anymore.

Those people are long gone. Without my trust, I’m another person. I don’t see the stars in your eyes, I see you searching for the next woman you can get into bed. Your voice is no longer the cutest thing I’ve ever heard, it’s filled with lies and never knowing what you’re actually thinking. Your promises mean nothing because I meant nothing.

So much of who I am was you. I changed everything about myself and turned into a woman I thought you would love enough to be the only one you loved. How naive was I? I will never be enough for you, and you will no longer be enough for me.

I sent my best friend a text one day after finding out you cheated again. I know you’ve read it, I know it’s in your messages because she sent it to you. I told her how much I loved you and I was willing to be with you and let you cheat on me for the rest of my life as long as that meant I still had you in my life. I told her I didn’t care if you lied to me, that I’d pretend to believe what you tell me from now on just so I don’t lose you. I no longer feel those things. Losing you freed me, gave me my self worth back.

Finally, I can say I wouldn’t take you back if you asked. For the first time in months, I don’t want you. I don’t want your lies, the other women I’m constantly worried about, I don’t want the anxiety and depression that comes along with being yours. I don’t want the good things either, I don’t want your good morning texts, I don’t want the I love you’s, I don’t want the family you promised me, or the future baby we planned for. I don’t want you. And that has freed me more than you can imagine.