2nd Place, A Shattered Perspective

A lot of the time I reflect on what I do as a person. If the choices I make are going to affect someone else. I find myself looking out windows on long car rides, sometimes staring without a thought in my mind, but most of the time I’m thinking of you.

How you made and still make me feel. How my chest burns, how I can never truly fix what you did to me. Why I second guess. Why no matter how many times you sunk around me, thorns woven in threads around my skin, I still saw the rose that blossomed, even if I had to bleed. Even if at the end, I was nothing.

You somehow have earned the right to plague my mind, and I regret ever peeling myself away, plucking thorn by thorn. But that regret can only last so long. A lot of the time I thought it was foolish to kill yourself after a heartbreak. What kind of sorrow must it invoke? I thought I could never understand. But I met you. I guess only when you experience it, does it make sense.

I let you in, showed the worst sides of me and felt it blow up in my face. So stupidly in love, and I thought you were too, and maybe you were, but I was replaceable, boring.

I did my best, and maybe I wasn’t what you needed, maybe I didn’t give you what you wanted and I’ll admit my faults. I’m not perfect, which is why a small part of me is still waiting for you to text, call, just to reach out.

Did you know for months after, I stared at the gift I had all wrapped and pretty for you? The letter I had written to go along with it. The lump in my throat at the prospect of opening it. Knowing that it was truly over and nothing would change that.

I read what I wrote after it all. How I was thinking of you with every line and you..? You were talking with someone else. I feel like I have failed as a person. I don’t know exactly what to feel anymore, except that I’ve lost myself in the process.

What I would give not to ask you the question I did. Your words still echo through my head, repeating like a prayer. Like what you were doing was a drug, a way to get through a dry patch within yourself.

Oh how I ripped the letter I wrote, throwing the bleeding pages in the trash along with my heart. And that wasn’t even the worst part. How you had me wrapped around your finger, pulling on the string, manipulating, convincing, twisting. I thought the only way to keep you was to give you away. Permanently be a second thought. Always second.

I should have known I would always be second. Especially in May. May 5th, when you spoke to me. How you almost chose your Ex over me. The hurt and pain I felt. The number 2 etched into my heart, chip by chip, hammered in there like a reminder.

You chose me at the end of the day, hours of anxiety and deliberation, like it was really a choice you needed to consider. After all I had heard about them, that keeping them in your life was worth what we had

I let it go, because maybe the hurt wasn’t worth the thought. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t run laps in my skull. How I tried to be the bigger person, and by the end of it all, you said to me “you felt less in love”, like my hurt was pushing you away, even when I tried to understand you. And weeks later I cracked.

You know when someone asks you if you are ok, and you just can’t keep the tears from pooling? I still remember breaking down on my steps, still trying to convince myself that I was ok while I sobbed into my cousin’s arms, because being strong for any second longer would make me combust. I lost my appetite for a long while.

Second hurts. And every time you cross my mind, I’ll be reminded of how you branded me with it. I find it funny that 4 days before our 1 year anniversary was when I finally had the sense to leave, and fuck did it sting. Yet despite this, I was in denial that you cheated.

You cheated. Fuck you [censored]