first

to someone i would rather forget,

you were the first. the first person i ever fell in love with. the first person i ever let break my heart.

i remember every part of you, i memorised you like you were the inside of my palms. memorised how your hair was always a mess, how blue your eyes were, if i was being really poetic i would even compare your eyes to the ocean but i don’t think even the ocean is as destructive as you are.

it’s unfair really, how i had no say in how much you affected me. i still can't manage to get over how much i felt for you. its been so many years and i still can’t speak of you without feeling nauseous.

i remember the butterflies at the pit of my stomach when you held my hand for the first time, remember the way you smiled into the first ever kiss you gave me. the first ever kiss anyone had given me. you always gave me this smile, the kind of smile that still lingers in my mind. the kind of smile i really hate now. i haven't seen a smile like that since. and i am so thankful because that smile is what had me from the start. if i think hard enough i remember how it felt being in your arms. i remember the traces of your fingertips and i wish i could scrub you off my skin like dirt, but i can’t. i can only replace your touch. i hate that i remember it so vividly sometimes, the way you would bury your head into the crook of my neck and lightly kiss it. the way you would say "hello," to me. i hate everything about you.

a memory that resides in my mind like a continuous bad dream is the way you used to kiss me, i don’t know why because since then i have been kissed by people who have loved me but i always seem to think of yours, just for a fleeting insignificant moment. maybe because you were my first. regardless, this just makes me hate you more. i used to think we were a fatal combination, but now i think you were just fatal for me.

it seems cruel when i think about what happened, it almost feels like a nightmare and i wish it was because the fact that this happened in real life, well it's awful. isn’t it? you knew it was awful when you begged for my apology and you knew it was awful when you did it again. there’s no nice way of explaining this. it was the same story, always, where you would beg for my forgiveness as you littered every part of me in marks and revelled in the sounds i made, revelled in the way your body felt against mine when you were so desperate for touch and i was so desperate for sincerity. i used to play through these memories in my mind every night and i can easily deal with them now because you are everything i detest. i hate repeating myself but i will do it again, and again, because even though this will never reach you i need you to know that i despise you with every part of my soul.

you filled me up enough so that i wouldn't feel as empty as i did, but who am i kidding? i felt as empty as i did before i met you. god, i thought i was so in love with you. i thought i was so madly in love with every part of you, that it made me blind to all the things you did to me.

it's scary how well you can lie. and i admit i was young and naive, and easy to manipulate but you didn’t have to do that to me. you never had to tell me you loved me, i never asked for it, i was happy loving you silently, i would’ve easily begged for your love but i was happy, happy loving you from a distance. it was you who found me, remember? was it just a way to see how long i would hold onto something that was non-existent, to see how long i could withstand the horror you put me through?

it’s the way i had to find out what you did from someone else. someone who didn’t even know me, someone who seemed to care more for me than you did. there’s no way to describe how i felt except that begging for death all night is what got me through the worst of it, i couldn't take how my heart felt like it was ripping itself to shreds over you.

i would say this was heartbreak, the worst possible kind. but it isn’t. not really. it was just agony. like watching yourself have a panic attack over and over again. i still can't fathom how well you lied to me. how well you pretended to care about me. i can say even when i turned your age i couldn’t lie half as well as you.

i wish i had the ability to lie like you did, to tell someone i loved them without meaning it, to sound as sincere as you. but fuck, you were truly just one of a kind. and i was foolish enough to believe you every time. i guess love and delusion go hand in hand.

i have been at deaths door many a times, i admit it. i had burnt my life to the ground before i had even realised what life even was, but i had never even thought to do what you did to me. not even on my worst day. don’t you think someone who loved you that hard deserved something better?

you did it so much, over and over and over again, and i forgave you over and over and over again. like a broken record on replay. you ruined parts of me so delicate that they have taken years to rebuild. you’ve made trust such a rarity to come by that when i do trust someone it takes every ounce of me not to overthink every single decision, every single thing said, every single action that’s made. i hope you feel guilt. i really do, i hope the guilt of how you treated me ruins you.

a few years ago i may have written that i missed you. that i could never hate you. but now i really do, i want the absolute worst for you.

it was 497 days of cultivating lies, cultivating smiles, countless bodies, countless apologies, countless phone calls, and endless cruelty. did you do it for validation? to know that you could still have someone so enamoured even after betraying them in the worst way possible? did you do it because you were so in love with someone who didn't love you back? because if you did, you know how much it hurt me. and if you felt anything as close to how i felt, then i would even go as far as to say you deserved every single second of it. maybe if i was a good enough person i would say that i don’t mean this. but i do. forgiveness doesn’t exist for people like you. don’t you think i was a little too young to be messed with?

it took years to get those voicemails, conversations, fake declarations of love out of my head. and i think it’ll take a few more years to get rid of the scars too. i don't think i will ever understand you and i don’t think i ever want to.

i used to wonder if we were ever meant to be together, i used to think that we were both so fucked up, that it’d oddly be so perfect to be together. i used to think maybe some people were supposed to fall in love and not be together. maybe if you loved me, that would have been us. but this isn’t a emily brontë novel and you will never worthy of my love. not in this lifetime, not in the next, not in eternity.

i used to think of you as a soulmate, but now i think it’s a disgrace to the word to call you that. so, i will leave you with this: i will never forgive you, but i hope i have enough love to someday forget you.

with absolute hatred,

Me.