“Do you miss him?” Her words sounded cold, as if she had some alternative motive behind them. “What is there to miss?” That question always gets to me. “Come on, you can’t act like you never loved the guy. Y’all were together forever it seemed.” To be honest with you the relationship itself seemed to be kind of a blur. I don’t recall much of it. I almost feel like it was never real. “You never asked me if I loved him. You only asked me if I missed him.”

“But isn’t that the same thing?” I took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t say so… There was a moment in my life where I was laying in my bed, sobbing my eyes out. My face so full of snot and tears and my face so puffy from all the crying I was doing and I just stopped. I just stopped and thought ‘what am I really crying for?’  ‘why am I letting him get to me like this?’ This man, this boy held no value in my life. I knew I loved him, I knew that I did all that I could for that relationship. I fought hard to keep us together and all for what? For him to turn around a treat me like just another person in his life? He wasn’t the person that I fell in love with anymore, he changed and I’m sure down the road I changed too. I was more in love with the person he had the potential to be than the person he really was. I was so busy focusing on our future and where we were going and trying my best to get there that I didn’t think about the present. I didn’t realize what he was doing to me. I knew he was manipulative, I knew he was toxic but I tried anyway because I felt like if we could get through this rough patch we would be able to make it somewhere. We would come out on top. But despite my efforts he left and now he’s become a completely different person. So do i miss him? No, there’s nothing to miss. I thought we could do it. I thought we had what it took to work through it, but it takes two and he wasn’t there. Now, I feel better than ever because I am no longer dependent on an idea of someone. I’m no longer worried about what will be or what was. I’m worried about me and what I’m doing. I’m able to be selfish for once and work on me.” I felt my voice start cracking. No matter how much I know it’s not worth it. It still brings tears to my eyes because it sucks; it sucks thinking that you could do absolutely everything right and still not get what you feel like you deserve.

-An excerpt from a book I’ll never write (#1) c.p