Sometimes

Sometimes I think that maybe, I'm still in love with you. That doesn't mean I love my boyfriend any less, it just means that when I think about you, I get a strong pang of pain in my chest, like my ribcage is collapsing around my heart and I remember that's what it felt like when I lost you. The pain isn't as intense as it used to be. It's not that crippling agony that had me silently screaming and crying into my pillow, clawing at and cutting into my chest to try and rip out my heart, rip out the pain. It still hurts though. It's still a hollow, deep ache that makes me crave contact with you. My ears long to hear the sound of your soothing voice again and that point in my tummy where all the laughter swells with happiness and mirth wants me to talk to you, laugh at your jokes and your humorous ways and my heart and soul just want you to want me.

Sometimes I think that maybe, if you'd have me back, I'd leave him for you in an instant. You've both hurt me so fucking much but he's hurt me more than you have. You were my first love, he was my first time, the one to pick up all the pieces, the one to put me back together and keep me alive after you made me want to die. But then he hurt me and broke me again, put me through agony, made me want to die. He saved me and then almost killed me and now there's no-one but him to patch me back up and he's all I have.

If you'd have me, if you'd love me and want me like you used to, if you apologised and accepted my tear-stained apology, God, I'd come back to you. I'd collapse against you in a heap of tears and regrets but I'd like to think things would finally feel right.

I'd miss him. I'd miss him like I'd left a piece of my heart behind, all aching and craving. Perhaps I'd miss him like I miss you now. Perhaps I could never be completely happy with either of you because the other means so much to me but that's not something I can decide now.

There is no decision to make, even. You won't have me back and I don't even know for certain that I'd come back if you did. I often worry that maybe he has the same thoughts about her and oh, as painful and disgusting a realisation it would be, it wouldn't be a surprising one. That's horribly depressing but I can't change that fact.

I wish I didn't think about you. I wish I could just erase you from my memory and focus on my relationship now. It does annoy me that he seems to be under the illusion that he's hurt me less than you have but if I told him about that, it would break him. It would destroy his happiness and inevitably, our happiness and my own. Without him, I am nothing. It sounds cliché and pathetic but I can't change that. Before him, I was going to kill myself; I was so close to just ending it all, as was he. We saved each other. He saved me when you were the one that drove me so much closer to the edge.

I wish I could forget about all the pain he has caused me and focus on the "I love you more than anything"s, the "You're absolutely gorgeous"s and the "You mean everything to me"s. I wish I could focus on the cuddles and the kisses and the sex and the comfort but I can't. Every so often I remember the betrayal, the lies and the emotional cheating and all the pain and mistrust that came with it. I couldn't even begin to explain how difficult it is to stop thinking about things that hurt me. Maybe I am an emotional masochist like that, I don't know. If I could control my emotions or my memory, there would be nothing stopping me from being happy.

He is happy. He has easily forgotten everything he put me through because he has guilt fuelling the process. I can't tell him how much the past still bothers me because he wouldn't understand. All the happiness would die away because he would feel so bad, so guilty and responsible for my pain that he would probably go ahead and do something awful.