Unrequited love.

Unrequited love.

A love that feels so real, but is anything but. We try to delude ourselves, we live in daydreams. We live in fantasy. We live in anything but reality because our lover is sweetest when he is the furthest away from us.

It is made for people like us. People who feel too much. People who live in color and don’t want the gray in betweens. We forget that they are human, because they are magnificent. Or at least, the idea of them is. Maddeningly and unequivocally, nothing to them can compare. We try so hard, and we go so far…..but do we really want to escape unrequited love? Is it not more safe here, is it not more….beautiful? Is not more romantic, more perfect? Do we go so far and do so much to fool ourselves into thinking that perhaps we have tried. Is it so that we can live the rest of our lives in a deluded sense of peace….that at least we have reached out, when in reality, buried in the depths of our souls, we know that we never wanted anything but a one-sided love? He is kinder in my mind. And he loves me, when I do not love me. 

Perhaps I just yearn for the thought of you. Maybe I crave you for who you could have been. Or who you could have made me be. You remind me of hope and of youth. You are an emotional state, you are nostalgia of who I was or who I should have been with you. All my poems will always belong to you even if I am with another. Your name will make my heart drop. I didn’t try hard enough, but maybe it’s for the best. Maybe it’s best that you stay in my books of poetry because maybe you are not as beautiful as I thought. You are a dream, I hope we never end up together. You are my dream, I wish we could have been together. But in another life where I am not me, but better. 

mental illness stole my youth

To the years i have lost in my head

Because of my mental illness

Please return to me 

And I promise to live you better,

I promise to defeat the monster in my mind

I promise to never let a day go for granted.

To the people I hurt because of my mental illness,

Please forgive me - 

I hurt you because I was hurting.

To the youth I lost because of my mental illness

Please take my hand and walk with me, talk to me

Tell me how I’m destroying everything I ever wanted to be,

Help me quit my insanity. Help me before I can’t help myself anymore.

I want those years back, I want the old me back. 

             I wish I didn’t have to live in my head in order to survive.

Dear 10 year old me

Dear 10 year old me,

I’m sorry. 

This is a letter to you. I owe it to your innocence.

First of all, i’m sorry that you’re having to witness your father cheating on your mother so viciously. You don’t understand how he could tell your mom he loves her and then go on to love other women. This contradicts every fairy-tale you’ve ever seen. And god knows how much you still hang onto fairy-tales. Everyone else in your class seems to have grown out of them, except for you. Perhaps you like to distract yourself with beautiful fairy-tales because your reality is flooded with the hideous constant voices of your parents fighting. I still remember how you would replay love scenarios in your head before you fall asleep at night hoping that you’d be able to dream of something loving instead.

Your friends all have fathers. And their fathers love them greatly. You remember that one day when your friends dad asked her to show him her homework? You thought he was asking you to show him yours. You got really excited because for once you thought a man was concerned about you - and not just concerned with his own selfish ways. You brought your friends dad your homework to show him how smart you were that day. He laughed at you. The ring of that laugh still possesses your eardrums to this very day. He told you that he was asking his daughter to show him her work, not you and told you to go show your own father yours. He didn’t know that your dad doesn’t care about you, let alone your homework. You went to the bathroom and sat on the floor and sobbed your eyes out until you couldn’t see. You just wanted a man to care. 

Although you were a damaged child, you were a dreamer. You always dreamed that someday, a man would care about you. And your homework. And although your dad gave you a slap in the face and a stab in the heart as to what love really was, you never stopped dreaming. I miss that about you, 10 year old me. I miss your limitless dreams. You promised yourself that you would find a love as pure as the love that you learned to give from your fairy-tales. You kept dreaming. 

And then, 10 year old me - you turned 13. And you met a boy. And you loved every last bit of his heart. He was your fairy-tale prince brought to life. He did not make your heart feel like it was on fire like your father. He cooled your fears with the water of his love. You stayed loving him. And he stayed beautiful. But one day, he turned cruel. And vicious. And instead of cooling your heart with water like he once did, he poured gasoline into it and watched you turn into a disgusting pile of ash. 

And now, 10 year old me - you are 20. And you are nothing more than ash. You are the woman you never wanted to become. You no longer dream. You no longer love. You no longer feel. You do not trust yourself, let alone anyone else. You kiss random boys in an attempt to make you feel. But every time you do - you become more emotionless. Your heart has walked out on you. You are so crumbled that you are unrecognizable. Please forgive me for letting you down. I know you had faith in me to keep your dreams. To keep your heart safe. To never put you through the heartbreak your mother went through with your father. But instead, all I did was destroy you. Please pardon my failure, 10 year old me. I tried my best. I pray to the heavens with my doubtful heart that there is an afterlife, so that maybe in the next life I can still save you.

You

I cannot give anyone my whole heart after you - because I have no whole heart after you.

And I go out on dates with others, pretending I am going out on a date with you, 

And I dress up in all your favorite colors, pretending I am going to see you,

And I paint my lips red, getting ready to leave the marks of my lips on you,

And the doorbell rings -

And it is not you. 

And I go inside his car dressed in all your favorite colors, 

And I try to avoid eye contact with him -

Because he is not you. 

Perhaps if I look down I can pretend that you are the one beside me. 

And I hate it when he tells me to look at him,

Because I am forced to face the truth that those are not the eyes of you.

And he speaks to me meaningless words with a voice that is not your voice,

And they are poison to my ears because the only sound I want to hear,

Is the sound of you.

And with every kiss he gives me I feel suffocated because I know,

Those are not your lips.

And with the touch of his hand I feel dead inside because, 

Those are not your fingertips.

And when he calls and the phone rings,

I still hope it’s you on the other line - 

But I answer and it’s him, 

And his voice sends bullets down my spine,

Because no matter how much older I get, 

In this life you will always be the only love of mine.

to your new girl

Dear Maria,

You don’t know me, but i’m a girl that loved him way before you ever did. Before you came along, your boyfriend was not only my world. He was my galaxy. 

I fell in love with him in 2009, perhaps you were too busy kissing other boys to have paid him any attention back then. But I paid him all my attention that my brain collapsed. 

And anytime anyone ever made him sad, I would stand by his side stronger than the most forceful tide in the ocean. Anytime he would talk to other pretty girls, my heart would rip up inside into a million little pieces. Anytime I would hear his name, I would feel an empire of butterflies rushing in my stomach.

I love him way before you ever have. And I loved him more than you ever will.

But don’t worry, Maria. My soulmate has become yours now. And like a thief in the night you took his heart away. 

I’m not writing you this to make you nervous. He has made me bitter. I don’t love anymore. Not him. Not anyone. I am incapable of loving because I loved your current boyfriend so violently for so long that I have wasted every last ounce of my heart.

Now he’s yours to keep. And lips I spent 5 years craving are now yours to kiss. He’s yours to love. And he’s yours to cherish.

I just ask of you, Maria, to never tell him that you love him more than anyone else. Because no matter how you feel about him, you will never compare to the flame in my heart that burned for him so ferociously that it has turned my heart into ashes. I ask you, Maria, to ask him to stop appearing in the eyes of every man I see. To stop making my heart drop when someone mentions his name. Tell him to leave me alone, Maria. Tell him to stop making me feel suffocated when another man lays his lips on me. But most of all, love him Maria. Cherish him Maria.