two years and three months

a week after you ended things, i wrote you a poem.

it is february 14th, 2023, two years and three months since your goodbye ended in a blackened zoom screen, and in that poem i said i didn't hate you for what you did to me.

i lied.

now, two years and three months later i sat in fundamentals of social work as we learned about "revolutionary love" and it hits me like a freight train as a woman calls the murderer of her uncle on the phone and tells him she forgives him... i don't hate you anymore.

you didn't kill me, of course, but you did kill a part of me. i listened to Taylor Swift's tolerate it and thought i'd never relate to anything more, and when my girlfriend broke up with be three months later i shouldn't have been surprised to realize that she wasn't my first heartbreak at all, but you were.

you hurt me. and i hurt you, and it doesn't really matter who started it, because it happened, and it's done and you can't change the past no matter how much you might wish it. we were kids. so entangled in a web of childhood innocence and adoration and adolescent confusion and toxicity, and some people are just meant to grow apart.

when i wrote you that poem, i did not forgive you. i thought i had. then i spent years cursing your name to the stars all the nights i couldn't sleep , and i realized there's a difference between understanding and acceptence.

i still think about you. i didn't lie about that.

when i write a line i once would have been proud to show you or watch an episode of buffy the vampire slayer or dig up old archived film projects and fanfictions or learn a fun fact about a subject you once loved...

i have a roommate and a best friend now who reminds me of you, sometimes. in the way that he talks and the way that we laugh and the way he is so beautifully, unapologetically himself.

and maybe one day i will show him the things that i write with shaking hands, and i will not fear if he thinks i am silly.

i miss you.

i think a part of me always will.

i think i will always have those little moments where my first thought is how i wish i could tell you before i remember that the last time i texted you was two years and three months ago with the words "i'm sorry."

you are not a bad person. and neither am i.

and maybe i don't agree with why you left but you did and i understand and i accept it... and i don't hate you.

you left to take care of yourself and in the wake of your absence i learned how to take care of mine.

i'm not lying, this time.

i don't hate you.

i love you, i miss you, and i'm okay with that.

i hope you're okay, too.