"Protect your heart" he said to me, "the world is a cruel place."
I've always lived carelessly, recklessly to the point of destruction. Well, it caught up to me. I broke. I jumped off one too many cliffs, dangled my heart on too many strings.
What is trust but placing everything you hold dear carefully into another's outstretched hands? Trust is the whispered conversations at 4am when the world is sleeping. It is believing that despite everything the world is a good and just place. I was once made to believe for a brief moment that boys kissed on the forehead and they opened doors for girls. For that fleeting instant, I was happy. You won. You got me. I let my guard down for a beautiful boy with a smile that lit up the room.
I believe we cling to people who are sincerely bad for us. Nan Goldin wrote, "Even if relationships are destructive, people cling together. It's a biochemical reaction,it stimulates that part of your brain that is only satisfied by love, heroin or chocolate; love can be an addiction."
I spent three years addicted to the 'love' of a beautiful boy. A boy who stole something vital from me; he stripped away my innocence and I was left cold, naked, and defenseless. I felt I was nothing without his love, approval and affection. So I continued to objectify myself to make him want me; it didn't work. In my attempt to prove my continued love for him, or anger that he didn't want me anymore, I sacrificed core values and lost myself along the way. In a sense this is an apology to you, dear one, you will always be my first love. I know I hurt you and that despite everything, we have too much baggage to ever really try again. I'm okay with that now. In the past three years we have both grown in separate directions and we don't know each other anymore. Perhaps we never really knew each other as well as we thought. Every John Mayer song belted out of a sunroof since last November has been for you. Entirely too many cups of coffee and journal entries have been spent over angst or love for you. My final betrayal, the last act of immaturity, I did to get back at you, I wanted you to somehow feel everything you had put me through over two years. I apologize. He hurt me in a way that you never did. The magic of our first love, was the ignorance that it will never end.
So now I trust sunshine, good music and sun dresses will make me feel alive again; but my trust is frail. Not only is my trust frail, but I am frail. I'm learning how to love and live all over again. It is going to take a lot of time and patience. I know now the world is a dangerous place, but a glimmer of hope remains that someday a boy will want a girl who can discuss Mubarak and Hobbesian theory with grace.
What is trust but placing everything you hold dear carefully into another's outstretched hands? Trust is the whispered conversations at 4am when the world is sleeping. It is believing that despite everything the world is a good and just place. I was once made to believe for a brief moment that boys kissed on the forehead and they opened doors for girls. For that fleeting instant, I was happy. You won. You got me. I let my guard down for a beautiful boy with a smile that lit up the room.
I believe we cling to people who are sincerely bad for us. Nan Goldin wrote, "Even if relationships are destructive, people cling together. It's a biochemical reaction,it stimulates that part of your brain that is only satisfied by love, heroin or chocolate; love can be an addiction."
I spent three years addicted to the 'love' of a beautiful boy. A boy who stole something vital from me; he stripped away my innocence and I was left cold, naked, and defenseless. I felt I was nothing without his love, approval and affection. So I continued to objectify myself to make him want me; it didn't work. In my attempt to prove my continued love for him, or anger that he didn't want me anymore, I sacrificed core values and lost myself along the way. In a sense this is an apology to you, dear one, you will always be my first love. I know I hurt you and that despite everything, we have too much baggage to ever really try again. I'm okay with that now. In the past three years we have both grown in separate directions and we don't know each other anymore. Perhaps we never really knew each other as well as we thought. Every John Mayer song belted out of a sunroof since last November has been for you. Entirely too many cups of coffee and journal entries have been spent over angst or love for you. My final betrayal, the last act of immaturity, I did to get back at you, I wanted you to somehow feel everything you had put me through over two years. I apologize. He hurt me in a way that you never did. The magic of our first love, was the ignorance that it will never end.
So now I trust sunshine, good music and sun dresses will make me feel alive again; but my trust is frail. Not only is my trust frail, but I am frail. I'm learning how to love and live all over again. It is going to take a lot of time and patience. I know now the world is a dangerous place, but a glimmer of hope remains that someday a boy will want a girl who can discuss Mubarak and Hobbesian theory with grace.
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