I’m trying to be as honest as possible with all of you. I’m trying to let you see the scars that are slowly forming around my broken heart. If you feel it’s too much, or worse, not enough then I’m sorry. There will always be certain memories that I will forever hold tight and there are barely things my brain allows me to still remember. But slowly the memories keep returning to me, bobbing to the surface like the wood from a shipwreck. It catches me off guard and I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach when one day I’m standing in line at the grocery store and the person in front of me is holding a certain bottle of liquor that takes me back to a particularly painful time. I don’t mind humiliating myself in front of you and I probably will many times, but my goal has never been to hurt a person who I once loved with such a greatness. He doesn’t deserve that, no matter what has happened between us. So those memories will stay locked away.

He is a boy that made me laugh just as much as he made me cry. He made me happy for quite a while and so the last thing I want to do is damage that. Nothing I’ve ever posted has been a lie, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone needs to know every little detail of our previous life.

There was wrong done on my end and I can’t hide away from that either. There were many times over the years that he would look at me with a hidden pain in his ocean eyes and ask me if I only stayed with him because I felt I had to. He didn’t want me to be with him out of some moral guilt, and he didn’t deserve that so the thought plagued him quite a bit. I of course, would brush him off and reassure him that I was still there because I wanted to be but that became less and less true the more I spoke it. I’ve mentioned that the last few months together were the roughest and during that time I’ll admit, I kept telling myself the only reason I was staying was because I had to. Because I had made a choice that couldn’t be undone. That was naive of me and unfair to him. Although he held on for longer than he should have, I also should have spoken up and said something. I should have realized that mistakes are part of life and don’t mean that they have to rule it.

Loving him has given me so much for my future. Before him I was lonely in a way I can’t even describe. I had never felt the type of love that makes you wake up in the morning feeling breathless when you once again remember that someone has chosen you, just you, and he gave me that gift. These days, I feel less unsure about myself, unlike before I met him. I feel like an actual human being who can have real adult feelings now. There’s a comfort in knowing that at some point, however brief it may have been, you were all that one person wanted. So I’m still learning from the mistakes I made and I’ll continue to quietly clean the cuts and hide the bruises on my soul in the process.