It has been a year since I last called you mine. It has been a year since I last had a bedtime call just to hear 'I love you.' It has been a year since I last kissed the wrinkles on your forehead when you got mad. It has been a year since I saw the look on your face when I got dressed up to go out with you. It has been a year since I rode in your passenger seat while you sang to all of your favorite songs. It has been a year since my heart was completely crushed and 365 days since I felt broken for the first time.

It has been a year and yet I still don't understand why I'm suppose to hate you.

There's always been this unspoken rule that once you are done dating someone, you must hate them with your whole being. This rule that you must bad talk anything they do without you and pick apart the people that they date after you. What people don't realize, and what I didn't realize until recently, is that you don't have to hate someone in order to get over them. That's the crazy idea people throw around these days. Some actually enjoy hating someone they claimed to love in order to forget about them. But truthfully, from experience, this doesn't work. The hate you create will only bring the other person harm, as well as your own. It builds up so much destruction inside of you. And honestly, most relationships do not just end one day. Many arguments or mistakes lead up to the end, whether they are foreseen or not. So in reality, how is one person to blame?

"The truth is, sometimes too much can happen in a relationship, and then there's nothing anyone can do or say. It's broken."

So this is my apology letter to you for how long it took me to let things go and how much I tried to hate you and make you the reason we didn't work out. It was never my intention to make such a mess between us. I will never regret you, no matter how ugly it ended. I remember how it all began and how happy it made me. I will never regret that or hate you for that.

I apologize for the many times I cursed your name and wished I had never met you, because truly I will always pray you get the unspoken blessings you quietly ask for and pray all of your worries are calmed. I apologize for anytime I've walked past you and didn't even flinch, because in reality my stomach was doing back flips. Mostly, I apologize for believing I was the only one hurting and the only one who felt torn to pieces, learning how to live alone again.

Whether we are ever close again, there are things I won't fail to thank you for and reasons why it will forever be impossible to hate you. You were not only my best friend, my partner in crime, or my other half; you were my first love and that cannot be hidden by hate.

In the future, to save much more heartache and bad blood between people, let's stop letting society tell us that we must hate anyone and anything that doesn't go our way.