Like getting ran over by a train I never saw coming, like suddenly going down a roller coaster, my heart was stuck in my throat. All because of you and what you didn’t do. My nerves stopped working when you let me get in the car, and I was off the rails by the time you let me walk away. I didn’t know what I was expecting. It feels horrible that you broke me again but you weren’t the first. Both times taught me some things at least, things no professor with his conferences could ever teach.
I did everything I could to make the relationship last…
There was no sacrifice I didn’t make, pushing my feelings and what I needed aside in order to give you what you wanted from me. I spent time away making handmade gifts and poems and ignoring my true passions just to try my hardest to make you feel my love. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for you and no ocean I wouldn’t cross,
…but it didn’t work.
I had to understand that love cannot be forced and attention should not be beggared.
There is nothing more painful than wanting to hold your hand or land a light kiss on those lips whose aftertaste I loved, and having it denied. Having to constantly ask for kisses, for hugs, for love and attention made up a bubble inside me that was eating me from inside. Even though I clearly said what I needed, that the love I gave I also needed in return, you ignored me as a fly. There came a time when I no longer asked for anything due to finding myself somewhere between the saying, “If I have to ask for it, I no longer want it,” and a cold and exhausting disappointment.
I learned that there comes a time when you must retire,not because of lack of love, but for my own mental health.
I pushed away my own needs to try and make you happier. After discovering I was yet again transforming into the version of myself I loathed, the one that did not care for others or for showing love, the cold “me,” I knew I had to move on. I cannot let anyone, regardless of how much I love them, turn me into what I was, into what you are: insensitive, cold, uncommunicative and careless.
I discovered that I don’t want to be with someone that doesn’t want me in his life. I was just as important as he was.
I’ve made it into my credo to leave as soon as I felt unwelcome, like I am unwanted there. You knew that and yet you made no attempt to change that environment. The importance you had in my day-to-day basis was evident, and since you failed to see it you must have been blind. Every little thing I said to you, every crisis, gossip, pain, and even some bad coffee I had and yet you never bothered to even talk to me about your day.
That my dreams are worth pursuing too.
The amount of times I near begged you to go and see me at my dance performances seemed to have reached the sky. Those nights, you weren’t there. There is nothing that hurts more to an artist or an athlete than having  loved ones refusing to see them perform. I begged you, and you looked the other way, putting up with the lamest excuses you could pull out of your pockets. You never even tried to understand me, my thoughts, my ways or even my words, dismissed my poems for being too complicated and you never deigned to look deeper. You called yourself an artist, but you were too much of yet another “doctor mind.”
That my voice matters as well.
I will never forget how, when I told you about my take on life and my beliefs and faith you were insanely quick to judge. How I revealed it to you and close-mindedly you shunned me.
I learned that it hurts, it hurts a lot, but it would be more painful being where I’m unable to thrive.
Don’t ever doubt I loved you, walking away was the hardest thing I have done, but for my own sake I couldn’t try to fix something because in the process, I was going to end up broken. The sad part was that the man I fell in love with gave me all the love I needed and cuddled me while I drove, grabbed me out of nowhere to hug or kiss me, the old you did all that. Grasping for those visions of our past was yet another reason.
And I learned the biggest lesson of all: that I loved him but I definitely love myself more.
For like, how the Moulin Rouge taught me, “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”