A break up is hard on most people.
You spend so much time getting to know another person, learning the way they smile when they're happy, knowing how they take their coffee just as easily as you know how you like yours, and being able to pick them out of a crowd without having to think about it.
I know everything about you. I know that you don't like chocolate, but you still bake with your mom during Christmas. I know that you care too much about the way people see you, and that you'll do anything to keep up appearances. Even if it means throwing others under the bus in order to make yourself look better.
Even if it means leaving behind a perfectly amazing girl simply because she's too much work. She's too hard to handle. On some days she's perfectly fine - loving, affectionate, the best - but on other days, she's almost completely different. She cries without warning, and you don't know what you did. She asks you a thousand times a day if you still love her, because she thinks that you've finally noticed how weird her laugh is, and that you don't love her anymore because of it. If you don't let her know as soon as you get home, she thinks you're dead and blows up your phone just to make sure you're alive.
That girl was me, and it was too much for you. You couldn't stand to reassure me a thousand times that I was fine, that I was important. You didn't have the energy to hear the same complaints day in and day out. Keeping up on me was too much; a simple question could spark an argument just as easily as it could spark one of those middle-of-the-night conversations YA novelists love so much.
You couldn't stand to listen to me talk about how you were randomly going to leave me one day for no reason, so one day you did just that. You got up and you left, without bothering to look back. You left everything just as you had left it, wanting nothing back. And, maybe you didn't want to upset me by asking for anything back. Maybe, you thought that me packing up all of your things would hurt me.
But not getting answers hurt me more than anything you'd ever done. All of the fights, all of the harsh words, all of the times you told me to 'just get over myself' - none of that hurt as much as waking up on another ordinary day without a clue in the world. I followed my normal routine: woke up, brushed my teeth, made my coffee. And I waited.
Sometimes you texted me when you woke up, sometimes you texted me after your shower. And I waited. Maybe you were running late, I thought. Maybe you were still asleep.
You weren't asleep, were you? You were already in school, sitting next to a pretty girl in class, lightly touching her arm. It was easy for you, to jump to another girl because you figured explaining to me how awful I was would hurt me more than a clean break.
But I waited for you. For six months, I waited for you. And I made excuses. I worried. I wondered if you got your breakfast in the morning, if you were passing all of your classes. I worried that you were putting too much pressure on yourself.
I worried that maybe I wasn't good enough for anyone at all. I started to believe that if you could leave me, then anyone else could. I started to worry that my hair was too big, that my butt wasn't big enough. Maybe I wasn't pretty enough. My freckles were too noticeable, and I wasn't anything more or less than average.
You left because you couldn't handle someone like me, who only wants the best for you. You left because my constant worrying was too much to handle; too annoying. And I was a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at any moment. One day I might actually follow through on things that I told you late at night, and you might wake up one morning to find out that a funeral for me would be held next week.
You couldn't take it. And that's okay. I'm better now. I've grown, and I love myself, and I know what I'm worth. I know that any man who chooses to love me is choosing to love all of me, and anything less than that is not okay. The way you loved me was not okay.
And I forgive you.
