You Almost Ruined Me
And just like that, I found myself alone in my bedroom. I was sitting on my bed, leaving you yet another voicemail where I could not form coherent words through the tears. And just as I expected, you never once returned my calls. You probably thought I was mentally unstable. I was. But you made me that way.
You told me we could not tell anyone about us. You told me you wanted to keep it hidden. I complied because I was young and I was scared to tell people who I really was, just like you were. You never wanted to go out in public. You never wanted to be seen with me. And after a while, I began to take it personally. And I began to stand up for myself.
But all secrets eventually surface. Secrets cannot be kept, cannot be trusted to remain in the dark forever.
I put up with you for eight long months, a lifetime when you are barely eighteen and in love. I never realized that the control over my own emotions was being taken from me willingly. I let you in, but did you ever have intentions to do the same for me?
You decided that the secret was too much to bear, and that you had to prove to yourself and others that the rumor was false. You were not gay, you told everyone. So you left, and every form of contact sent from me to you was left with no response. And that’s where I found myself at a crossroads.
I wanted to exploit you. I wanted to tell everyone about the you I knew because I was so broken. I always had pride in myself for being so levelheaded, so able to see when a situation was sour. But you took that away from me when you left. And I never really got it back.
The following summer, I decided that nothing was more important than forgetting that I knew you. That there was an us, if you want to call it that. I drank, but never ate. I existed, but I never really lived. The more I thought about the future, the more I thought about what life would be like if you would let go of image and embrace your innermost desires, the more I felt stomach pain and an urge to numb myself.
Two years later, and I never really think about you anymore. I see you around, but I look down to my feet because the thought of making eye contact with you sickens me. The love I had for you made me physically and emotionally bizarre, and now I can finally recognize myself again. I can feel something for someone else without reminiscing about what we were. If we were really anything at all, I’ll never know.
This is my closure. This is me saying goodbye forever because you never let me.
