you and i are proof that there is nothing rational about love. if there did exist rationality, we would have never made it. because your friends tried to sell you on the idea that I was not good for anyone. they ran you through a timeline of events, dug up every love that went bad at the core and placed it before you. they tried to sell you on the idea that i could have never be good to you. and yet, you stepped into the abyss of everything unknown. Told your fear to come back another day because courage was visiting. This is love. 

I want a love that wakes up every morning and feels lucky to have me. I want a love without hesitation, without doubt. A love that can say, “yes, yes I am in love with you” without having to stutter at the question. I want a love that keeps me safe, but that at the same time pulls me towards the things that I am too scared to do alone. I want a love that holds my hand, that says “I am here, I am here”. A love that never lets me forget it. I want a love that never makes me feel alone, a love that understands, or at the least, tries to. I want a love that never curses me out in the middle of the street, a love that never frightens me. A love that uses their voice kindly, a love that understands my body still remembers what it is like to be dragged out into the mud of everything unholy. I want a love that knows I will always carry that trauma with me, a love that never asks me to ‘just get over it’. I want a love that understands not all the poems will be about them, a love that understands that there was something before this, before him, and it wasn’t always kind. wasn’t always a good place to be, wasn’t where my heart was safe. A love that understands I must tell these stories, a love that understands my survival depends on this. I want a love that always calls me back. A love that moves its own feet towards apologies whenever and wherever they are needed. I want a love that takes my hands and says, thank you. A love that appreciates me. A love that knows that although I am a woman drowned in sorrow and grief, I am still here, and I am still trying. I want a love that is my personal hype man, a man that doesn’t just tell me I am beautiful, but makes me feel it. A love that says, “ you are kind”, “you are smart”, “you are capable of anything”. I want a love that stands up first in a crowd full of people for me, even if they must stand alone. I want a love that isn’t afraid of what the rest of the world thinks, because they know that love is better without boundaries. A love that knows that love is better when you stop caring about what other people think of it. A love that doesn’t look for other people’s approval to love me. I want a love that never makes me feel unworthy. I want a love brave enough to stay, a love that wants to stay, a love that says, “things aren’t always easy, but this is where my heart is, this is where I want to be”.

My bestfriend asks me if there is any part of me that is still waiting for you. At first thought, I want to say that the waiting has stopped. Because at the least, it should have. But the truth is, there is still a small part of me that hopes it’s going to be you in the end. There’s no point in denying the truth, not to myself at the least.

So maybe they aren’t completely wrong in their assumptions. There is still that tiny hope that when I walk into that crowded room, full of familiar faces, I will only see you. That small hope that your voice will be the only one ringing in ears over all of that bickering, all of that background noise.

I remember the last time we were in a room together. We’d only been broken up for about a year and there you were, leaning against some sort of table and me in that pink cardigan doing my best impersonation of a girl who didn’t love you anymore. I wanted to be the girl who could share space with you without sharing so much of her heart. And yet, I could not be. Even now, years later, I still cannot step out of the girl I was then. Because there are bad days.

There are days where I am weighed down by your absence. How much of my life I shared with you then and how much of it I don’t get to share anymore. There are days where I cannot drag my heart to a place it isn't ready to settle into. My stubborn heart constantly refuses to give up hope on the idea that we might still end up together.

It seems stupid really. I mean it’s been 4 years now. You’re happy. I know you are and I am too, for the most part anyways if you subtract the bad days. I can fall in love again. I did fall in love again. And even then, my heart still found room for you. I don't know what that means anymore. I know that I still must love you, if even after all these years, my hands keep reaching for you. But I’ve also grown old enough to know that there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with them.

I don’t know if I’m in love with you. Still. I will always sincerely hold some special adoration for who you were back then, that young boy who teased me about the color of my jeans, the boy who ran the mile to my house because I was having that anxiety attack, but most of all, I will always love the boy who innocently loved me for who I was, even on the days when I became more mess than girl.

I don't know that I’m in love with you anymore because that boy- doesn't exist anymore. This is as much of a good thing as a bad one. And although this seems strange, I am proud of you for walking away. For growing strong enough to know that you deserved better.

I know that I, too, have came a long way since then. I know I’m a hard person to be with- at least that part is constant. I’m less naïve about love. I can recognize when I’m being loved the right way. But even when I was loved the right way, there was a part of me that was held back by you. Because everything that came after has been held up to the light against what we had.

So I guess this is my closure. This is where I begin to let go of that stubborn hope. Because I have given up a lot of good love in exchange for something unrealistic. I know there is not going back. I know that that ship has sailed. That it is at dock, in a distant place, maybe even a different universe that this one.

I think most of my stubborn hope roots from how much we grew together. From how innocent it all was. How good love was. But I need to let it go. And this is how I come to terms with it. By telling you the truth of it, by finally putting it out into the world.

So maybe you’ll always be the one person I love. Sincerely and genuinely. But that doesn’t mean it works. So this is my apology. I am sorry for how long it took me to let this go.

I’ve never really belonged. Not to places, not to feelings. Not to people. I am and always have been a woman who belongs deeply to herself. I am the one who has tended to the wounds I did not inflict upon myself. I am the one who has picked myself up off the floor on the days when my soul grows tired at the knees and can’t hold up any longer. I am the one who is there to remind myself that just because I placed love somewhere it couldn’t survive doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. Even in belonging to myself, I have given up a lot for others. There was a time I was convinced that the sole purpose of my existence was to love those that were hardest to, just to prove that even in all the brokenness there is still room for beautiful things to happen. I am beautiful. I have happened. I have been loved beyond all rationality. I have been loved beyond measure and I am grateful for that. I am beautiful in a way that’s overlooked so often. I forgive easily. I am graceful, full of light. I have become the warmth that welcomes you home after you’ve strayed far from the truth. I am gentle, soft spoken. I do not let my ache grow any bigger than it needs to. Sometimes, I have hurt people. I have been loved and I have chosen to look the other way when it tried to keep me from the world. I do not crave a love that intends to keep me from the world but rather nudges me out the door on the days when I am afraid to step out into the sunlight. I crave a love that understands that there is places in my skin where the blood still seeps through and I become the girl I used to be- broken and battered up and scared. I crave a love that understands there is still things I have not fully healed from. Whether it be my fathers neglect to love me whole heartedly in the moments I needed it the most or the love I gave to a boy on his way to become a man that didn’t have the strength to hold it. I need a love that understands all good things take time and that I perhaps am one of those things. I need a love that is courageous. A love that meets me halfway, smells the smoke and can still move it’s feet toward the burning house because fire can still emit light and that light is the same light what will keep us from the darkness in the aftermath of everything.

Nothing has changed after all. I am still more pessimistic than normal. I don’t give myself enough room to put hope into things. I fall apart behind closed doors and have yet to learn how to talk about the hurt without having to dip my fingertips in pools of blood. I don’t know how not to be angry. It manifests itself in everything I do. This has become another bad thing in my life. Something more in need of fixing. Nothing has changed after all. I am still doing my best impression of healing and it’s never any less messier than before. By the time this is over, you’ll forget what your bedroom walls look like without my ache plastered all over them. You'll never see this as a bad thing. You love me too much to think of anything that belongs to me as less than beautiful. By the time this is over, you’ll never be able to wash these things away. Any of them. They will stay when I don't. In advance, I’d like to say sorry. I would love you and be less angry about it if only I knew how to.

The things we’ve wanted from life have always been very different. I don’t want children. Partly because I struggle with taking care of myself most days. The other half of it being I like being selfish. Either way, you never stop saying I’d be a good mother. You point out all the ways in which even in my claimed selfishness I find room to put others before myself. I guess to some extent you’re right. I’m just scared of commitment. You of all people should know that. It’s the reason why we broke up. I didn’t want to commit my whole life to making you happy and taking care of you. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it because you deserve it more than anyone else. You deserve the kind of love that nurtures you when you need it and until you don’t. I just could never be that for you. I wish I could. That’s why I’m choosing to let you go now before it’s too late and you’ve wasted more time than necessary on something that could never really work. I know you think otherwise. I’ve always been more of a realist than you. Either way, I hope you find what you’re looking for. I hope you’re loved far and beyond what you think you deserve because I know you think so little of yourself. Your awkward silences, your nervous habits- someone is going to love those things about you. You’ve got to stop worrying so much that you’re not good enough or that you aren’t where you’re supposed to be because although you are not yet the person you’re intended to be, you’re on your way and that’s farther than most people have gotten in life. You don’t give up easy, not where it counts but sometimes you should. This is one of those things. I am one of those things. It’s enough for me that we tried and that you taught me how to share more of myself with you and the world. I want to say thank you for that. Thank you for bringing me out into the sunlight and for teaching me that the world isn’t as scary as I’ve made it out to be. It’s much kinder than I thought and there’s more room for hope than despair. So this is to say thank you for sharing this small but important part of your life and my own. Thank you for believing in me on the days where I couldn’t. Thank you for loving me in my darkness and thank you for loving me until even I began to see the light in myself too.

Okay it’s been nine days since I found out you were existing in a place much farther away from me than I hoped possible. It turns out two people so in sync could be swept up by the wind to be carried places with so much distance between them. You’ve returned home and I’m still not sure that home really is a place after all. The sky looks different without you, the wind doesn’t touch me like it used to and you’re in a distant place where my hands can’t stretch far enough to hold you like they want to.

Love (at least for us) meant racing towards survival. In between it all, we forgot about why we were here in the first place. You started lying and I began seeing other people. We figured that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. When your picture perfect portrait of us fell to pieces I was the equivalent of devastated. When you heard I was seeing someone else you were angry. So we never tried to fix anything and did what we knew best. Denial. You lied to cover up the truth and I fell in love with someone who wasn’t you because what you had to give kept falling short of my expectations. What we did to each other was healing as well as we could, as best as we knew how to. So maybe we did unforgivable things to each other and you’re just as sorry as I am for the way in which we decided it was over. We should have put words to it instead, written it across an ocean, made that phone call. Love (at least for us) was more about the learning and less about the survival.

It became a contest. We were in a race to see who caused the most damage. You had a new girl in your bed three days after we decided there wasn’t anything left worth saving and I kissed your bestfriend. Worst of all, when you found out you didn’t hear it from me. I like to think that in love we are racing towards survival and this is the only way we knew how. So I cried when I found out about her and you never forgave me for what I did. we forgot about how much we really did care for each other. It was there in the moment you decided to cover up the pain with the sweet look on her face as she slept beside you and it was there when I decided he was the closest to you I’d ever get to be again. I’m sorry for the both of us because we didn’t know any better than to hurt each other.

To the days I never thought I would get through: it turns out I did. bloody knees and scared wrists are enough proof of the battles I have fought. mostly within myself. always caught between self hatred and learning to love myself. it turns out, hatred was always stronger. in the tug o war of emotions hatred had more people on their team. more reasons to belittle my worth. more excuses to not try. and so I did not try. I began to settle for second best. stared at my reflection in the mirror long enough to understand that there are things quite hard to love here. understanding doesn't always make it better. sometimes it is just harder. whatever they said to me about acceptance turned out to be a lie. so I accepted that there are things about me far too complicated to really love. and that didn't make it better. at the end of the day, I am still going unloved on the days when my bones are breaking beneath the weight of my desire to be deemed worthy enough of something so beautiful. at the end of the day, I still haven't quite learned about what it takes to love myself.

I began to call you by other names. Tried to strip you of your identity in a way that made it less painful for me. It had been three months since we’d spoken and your name made something unholy inside of me come to life. It made me angry and bitter. So I began to fill the places where your name was meant to be with other things. I heard your name again today. It's getting better. Good things take time. I need for you to know it doesn’t make me into something ugly anymore.

Tonight I am a bit nostalgic about things that already happened. I close my eyes and go back to that Summer night back in 2012. I was in love with a boy I was convinced I’d end up with. I’ve come to realize that when you’re so young and naive it’s easy to build dreams. It’s easy to make the blueprints of your future because you’re so full of hope. It makes me happy to think that there was a time I was as hopeful as I was then about love. It makes me happy to think that I believed in something so deeply I never thought it wouldn’t happen. I know usually that’s the kind of thing you’d regret. All the time you spent hoping and how things never came about in the way you wished they would have. It was hard to see it as a beautiful thing when in the end it wrecked my heart as I realized we could never be together in this world. I tried to forget it happened, to erase two years from my life. In time I realized that it was impossible to because it was essential to who I became after. It’s essential to who I am now and I believe in that deeply. Sure it didn’t work out but it was nice while it lasted. I enjoyed the nights we laid in open fields looking at the night sky. I love it for all the adventure and the way it taught me to fight for the things I loved. Most of all, I love it for the way it taught me that there are things in this world that could never really be yours. I appreciate him for what loving him taught me. I learned how to let him go- gracefully, without the resentment, without my high hopes for the future because it would have been too much of a burden not only for me, but for him too. I believe now that things happen for a reason. I really do. I know I still love him but I also know that it’s okay to love things that aren’t meant for you to keep. I wasn’t meant to keep him but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t meant to love him. I was meant to love him to learn something. About myself. About love. About letting go. And today, three years later I’m thankful for that. It took me a long time to get here but I am happy that I never gave up on finding his purpose in my life. Wherever you are, thank you for the gift you have given me.

Five shots in and I start thinking this way about you / @thewordsyouneverunderstood

It’s you / @thewordsyouneverunderstood

- Last nights phone call / @thewordsyouneverunderstood

- December 24th, 2013 // @thewordsyouneverunderstood

- Seventeen / @thewordsyouneverunderstood