I love you, and I'm sorry about that.
I'm sorry that I fell in love with you from that first pathetic
one-line quip in the eighth grade. I'm sorry that the tango we danced
was so passionate, that our eyes kept connection. I'm sorry that you
were the one to help me stop cutting myself—because it was your
inevitable betrayal that allowed me to slip back into it again. You
were the only one who cared about it in the first place—once you
didn't, why should I?
These apologies aren't really for you, darling. I'm sorry for myself—I
spend all my time feeling sorry for myself when I think about the
years I wasted loving you in silence. I took your juvenile betrayals
in stride, believing that no matter what you did, you were just shy,
there was nothing particularly disgusting about me. I was disgusting
because of my love for you, not in spite of it. I know that now.
So I'm still disgusting, because I don't know how to stop loving you.
I use you to manipulate the men in my life today, simpering, sobbing,
making them puff up and say that they'll never hurt me like you did.
They're lying, but I drink it down because it makes me feel better. It
makes me feel better that they declare their wishes to murder you
aloud, while I had to squelch them. Nobody else understands what it's
like to love someone you absolutely hate.
Except you.
Because you're just like me. Because you had to befriend every guy I
was interested in. Because you swept away boys who flirted with me,
because you would try your hardest to destroy the man who loves me
now. Because you can't forget the tango either, or how great I am, or
what it was like to want to help a girl to have her push you away.
You're with her now. I'm her friend now. I have a happy relationship
now, except for every time I think of you. I think of you every day.
If you're destroying the relationship between me and the only man
who'll ever love me for exactly what I am, then I'm honour-bound to
destroy your first love with that whore. I don't say it out of
cruelty, I say it because she cheats on you and you stay. I could
leave you with her. You deserve it. I deserve happiness. You won't
give it to me.
Because you think dating me means cries of 'Heathcliff' on the moors,
tears and kisses. It's really me kicking your ass at MarioKart. I'd
kick your ass at MarioKart, and cheer loud at your baseball games and
trip on the clothes on the floor of your room. I'd bake cookies and be
afraid to let you try them. I'd come up with a sickening pet name for
you that you love no matter what. The real me is sweet. The me you
make me is bitter.
So my life is bittersweet, and it's all thanks to you.
I hope that when high school grows farther and farther behind me, we
grow up and can be friends. I hope that those friends we could become
become lovers. I want to love you and enjoy it. I want the stares we
share for five minutes straight to end with us laughing, not leaving
the room.
I'm afraid I want what I can't have.
In seven years, I'll call you, darling.
Till then.
