There was a point in time when I was indistinguishable from you. You were a part of me, and it consumed me. I no longer had my own identity. At one point, I thought you were everything I needed and wanted out of life. I treaded carefully so I wouldn’t upset you. I told myself if I was happy and acted like we were happy, that you would be happy and I would have saved you.
It didn’t always feel that way. In the beginning, you were my person and I was yours. We were best friends and shared everything. I fell in love so deeply at 14 years old that I lost myself. You did everything right: you bought me flowers, wrote me letters, drew me pictures, made me playlists, and made sure I felt loved… until you didn’t. Until after a year, some part of you decided that I no longer needed to be treated well, because you knew I loved you too much to walk away.
One year into our relationship, you cheated on me with someone I considered to be my friend. In that one night, you shattered everything I thought I knew about you, about me, and about friendship. You had been lying to me for months, and none of my friends warned me. You broke me, yet I ended up comforting you, telling you everything was going to be okay, and rescuing you from the depths of depression. You shattered me and I listened as you cried and told me I was all you had. I cried alone, and slowly started to put myself back together after my trust had been so violently broken. That was one year in.
For a few months, you were kind and loving, but soon I became the person you blamed and neglected. I was not as naive as I had been before; I saw the change in you. I stayed because after all this time, all these fights, you had convinced me that were I to leave, you would end your own life. You told me so with the knowledge that at 8 years old, I lost my own brother to suicide. You told me so knowing that it was the only thing that would keep me from ever seriously contemplating leaving.
Two years into our relationship, you broke up with me again. You left, yet you still talked to me all the time and never really let me move on. You made me feel as though if your wounds did not heal properly, that the blame would be mine and I would carry that forever.
Then you wanted to get back together. I tried to be strong and careful this time, but I see now that I just gave you what you wanted. At first we laughed, played, and adventured again. Except it wasn’t the same, and it never could be. I stayed for the same reason I always had, out the fear you would take your own life. I had convinced myself that you were an essential to my own happiness. I believed I could never feel complete alone, and that I would never love another person as much as I loved you.
We continued on in this way for many months, celebrating our third anniversary together in November. Then, like clockwork, you broke my heart for a third time in March.
This time, we had applied to college, and I was faced with the hardest decisions of my life. I was depressed, beaten down by a relationship that should have ended years before, but still in love with you. I knew this time I had to save myself, and I had to try to move on. For the first time, I went to a school dance with someone other than you. He treated me exactly how I deserved to be treated, but could not fill the void our relationship left. I thought I was missing you, but I was really missing myself. When I told you I was going to prom with someone else, you told me that you would go to the river to kill yourself. I truly felt as though I had killed you.
I wish that I had run the opposite direction from you after this, but instead I listened to you when you told me you were so depressed you couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and that the only remedy was me; That I was the only thing that could give you the will to live.
When I finally got away it felt like the first breath of fresh air in so long. Since then, you have called me with the sole purpose of calling me a whore.
I have had my fair share of anger and sadness over our relationship. I have spent nights wondering what I did so wrong to make you have so little respect for me. Now I would like to thank you for showing me that I shouldn’t put up with being treated this way. I know I can take so much yet still come back a stronger person because of you. You taught me that good friends are the only lifeline I need when things get tough, and that I never need to rely on another person for happiness or approval.