Dear Love, Please Leave Me Alone

This is a letter for all the times you made me feel those stupid butterflies and that wretched hope for more of you. This is a letter not of contempt but of regret. I regret to ever cross paths with you, Love. I regret to ever feel the lightness in my stride and the silent, gentle stroking in my heart that always left me breathless.

I regret ever knowing you, because every single time I find you in someone else’s soul, you burn me with the intensity to destroy.

I first found you in the eyes of my parents. Love, you were shining so bright in their eyes, introducing yourself to me through forehead kisses and shoulder rides. I drowned in you in the same way I drowned in the belief that my parents loved me and each other, but when I was eight you burned my home. You took away the arms I clung to when I cross the streets.

Love, you are vile. You showed yourself to my father in the eyes of a different woman and burned me and my mother, and I was the only one to survive the fire. My mother’s eyes never lit up again. She was reduced to ashes and suddenly I didn’t know who I was because I have lived knowing she was mine as I was hers. Now that she’s gone, I am, too.

You found your way to me again at school, in the company of people who laugh at my jokes and save me a seat every lunch. I started hoping that I have found a new home, where you grow, and I find myself wanting you there. Wanting Love around me, given to me and given by me. I wanted to give you to everyone, but yet again, you burn the house even before I could build a threshold. You made them shun me for my past, for the time I forgot you and the time I refused to believe you existed. You became vicious and malicious, you became hushed whispers from across the room and condescending glances from the people I thought were my friends.

And this time? This is the last straw.

I never thought you could burn me like this. To continuously smother me in flames, to roast me into nothing and still have me alive.

Oh, love. I refused to believe it was you.

I refused to see you in his eyes. I refused to believe it was you in his warm embrace and refused to feel your touch through the steady beat of his heart. Yet you forced your existence on me, you said so yourself in his words.

“I love you.”

I remember catching my breath, refusing to believe what I just heard, but you took form in him. I did not know what happened but you became him.

I can’t fathom why I thought it would be different but I embraced you anyway, my arms more open than they ever were, feeling the heat envelope me, letting you reach inside to the core of my being.

Then, you set me on fire.

I should’ve known.

Your smiles turned to pursed lips. Your embrace became crossed arms. The vision of you walking towards me became your back walking away.

Love, you have fooled me so many times. So I write this letter to you to let you know.

Love, spare me.

Love, no more.