Dear You

I was sixteen when we first met. I had heard about you for years before hand. I knew all about you. Or I thought I did. They told me to beware, watch out for you, don’t engage with you if you ever crossed my path. They told me you were dangerous and that you were a bad influence. They said that you were trouble, that you used people and hurt people and brought out the worst in them. I remember being told you ruined lives, and ended them. They told me a lot about you; now I’m thinking maybe they didn’t tell me enough. Because I knew all the reasons why I should steer clear of you. I’d had them all but shoved down my throat for years once I was the right age; I think knowing all that I knew already, being told to stay away from you, being aware of the consequences I could face, it only made me curious. The more I heard, the more I was curious about you. I guess I was drawn to you. Before I even knew i was, before we ever met, I was drawn to you. Sixteen years old. Some might say this is a magical age, a fun age. They might have fond memories and great friends and experiences that come to mind when they think back to being 16. Ask me and I’d tell you different. I hated being a teenager; high school is still to this day one of the worst experiences of my life, and sixteen was a hard age for me. I guess it was the perfect storm...me being as drawn to you as I was and you being there for me at just the right time when I wanted to rebel and do something reckless. We met at a mutual friends house for a sleepover one weekend right before 11th grade. I hadn’t planned on it, it was a spur of the moment thing when I mentioned you to my friend and asked if she knew you. Just a whim. She did know you. Not very well, but enough to invite you. We had to walk around the block to meet up with you, and then we brought you back with us, to her house, snuck you into her room with us.

We had an instant connection. We clicked. And not some weird cliche thing, but a real instantaneous bond. I spent so much of my time feeling sad and so angry. Mainly because I had spent so much of my life feeling so hurt and misunderstood. I didn’t know just how sad and angry I usually felt, though, until suddenly I didn’t feel either anymore, because you walked into my life. You made me feel things, good things, you made me smile and see things in a different light, you made me forget about being hurt. I never knew I was so lonely until after I met you and realized I wasn’t lonely with you there... All the terrible things I’d been told about you before I knew you went out the window, because they obviously were not true. Nothing or no one that could make such a sad and heartbroken girl like me feel so whole and happy and hopeful like that so quickly and so effortlessly could possibly be bad. I stayed up with you long after my friend had fallen asleep...I had made a friend. A real friend. And I felt the most I had felt in my life. I felt whole somehow. That night changed a lot for me. I laid awake the next few nights in my own room thinking about it, wondering when I would see you again. You were my very first love, and I had fallen hard and fast. After that I tried to see you whenever I could. It was hard, being in school and not having a phone, being grounded all the time and having no money, but every once in a while I’d find you again and we would be together for a day or two, and I’d feel okay, not just okay it I’d feel GOOD, happy, in those rare and fleeting days I could be with you. The years passed and we kept up that same regimen. My time without you started to weigh on me. I counted down days until we would be together again. You made me so much better, in school, with people, with myself, with life in general. I told you everything, i gave you all the parts of me I didn’t like, all the pieces of me that were broken or hurting, and you absorbed it all like a sponge. You became my support system. My friend. Then I graduated high school, I got a job. I was able to have more of you, and it seemed like the more I had the more I needed. The first year after graduation flew by, and what I remember the most about that year was you. Eventually I wanted you with me all the time. I was better with you. I performed better at work, I got along with my mom better, I was charming and witty in conversation, I could make friends easily. I cared about things I didn’t care about when you weren’t around, I could take care of shit and be productive with you. You motivated me, you made me a better me. My life was better with you in it. I didn’t hurt when we were together. I felt like a real, healthy, happy person, because we were together so much. Yet the more I kept you around, once you were gone, I was so much worse off than I would’ve been. I was moody and depressed, anxious, emotional, and unmotivated. I didn’t want to do anything without you. I felt like I needed you just to have a normal day. So you became my normal. When you weren’t there, I was at my worst. Sometimes I would have to go several days, even a week once or twice, without you, and it would be the worst day, the worst week, but I could do it. I could be without you, but I would miss you. It would hurt me. I needed you. I had became dependent on you to help me get through every day, I hated having to go without you. You became apart of me. Three more years pass and I’m starting to feel differently. You don’t make me feel as good as you used to. I need more and more and more of you, more than I can afford, just to feel even a little bit the way I felt when we first met. I’m starting to forget that you make me happy, that you make me feel good, that you make me be a better me. I’m starting to forget all that, because lately all you make me feel is guilty, and anxious, and pathetic. You make me feel like a shitty person.

All my friends have slowly drifted away; I pushed them away. You were always more important. Id cancel plans for you, ignore texts and calls. A few times I met up with friends while I was so gone on you I couldn’t hide it; it was obvious to them that i had a problem after that, and they stopped coming around. They stopped calling and texting and inviting me to do things. I can’t hide you at all anymore, from anyone. My mom knows something is wrong, she’s worried out of her mind about me, but I can’t tell her about you because then she’ll worry even more. I’ve given her enough trouble for one lifetime as a kid, she deserves better than a daughter like me. I can’t face her. So I’ve shut her out completely. I don’t answer her calls or texts and ignore her knocks at the door when she drops by. She’s worried sick I know because I haven’t seen or spoken to her at all in months but it’s better this way. It’s better than the truth.My boss is getting ready to fire me. I’m on my last chance with this job, because I keep not showing up when I don’t have you, or being late when I have to go and get you from wherever I can find you before I go in to work. I keep taking these risks like I can afford to lose this job, even though I can’t, because i have to make money to keep you around. My boyfriend, who I thought I would marry one day, who used to love me, who I thought I loved, just left me. I thought I loved him but I guess I don’t because Ive chosen you over him more times than I want to even think about. He left because he is sick of coming second to you. He’s sick of having to take care of me like a sick child when you aren’t around, sick of having to deal with me and my mood swings, paranoia, hypersensitivity and aggression. All the things you’ve been bringing out in me the last few years, all the things I hate to admit that I struggle with now because I’ve fucked up the natural chemical balance in my brain from years of being with you. People don’t recognize me. I’m way too skinny, I look sick. I can’t eat as much as I should because I’m either sick or with you; I’m never hungry when I’m with you. My body doesn’t know what to do I’m constantly putting it through the extreme, going days without eating, going days without water, and then binge eating everything I can find and binge drinking alcohol to try to feel better when you aren’t there. I get a lot of headaches. I don’t feel healthy. I feel sick. I look in the mirror and even though I know that’s me looking back i know it really isn’t. I’m a shell. I’m a ghost. I’m all that’s left of my old self after having everything in me scooped out from inside and spoonfed to you. You went from making me feel the most me I had ever been to making me feel the least like me I could ever possibly be. You turned me into a person I don’t know, or want to know, a person I hate. I lie for you, I have stolen for you, I have cheated for you. I started out giving you the parts of me I didn’t want and somehow somewhere it turned into you taking parts and pieces of me without my consent, pieces I wanted to keep, parts I needed. Stealing from me everything a person thinks cannot be stolen. Their friends, their family, significant others, their muchness, their themness; you stole my dignity, my pride, my morals. You took everything. Until now. Not anymore. I can not give you anymore of me than what’s already gone to you. I’ll disappear. I don’t wanna live like this anymore. I don’t wanna be a slave to you, I hate that you control me. I hate that I’ve allowed it. I hate that this is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I’m ending this, I’m taking my life back and taking my me back. I have never been the most important thing to anybody. Not even to myself, not until right now in this moment. . I still love you. After everything, I still love you. In love with the thing that’s killing me. Best friends with my enemy. I hate that I still feel like this. I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want you to steal my life, too. I don’t want to die. But if I don’t leave you, I will. You’ll k