I forget

I gave you all my favourite parts of me and when you took them and appreciated me I felt ok. You slowly discovered all my least favourite parts of me, and told me you loved them, and I started to feel like maybe I wasn’t so awful, like maybe, to someone, to you, I did not have a hideous side, only a side I was afraid of. And I felt whole, and better.

The problem was when you left; you took with you the ability to see the good in all these parts of me. Without you I forgot I didn’t need to fear food, or that it was ok to be sad, and that crying didn’t make me weak, that even in my pyjamas, or when I hadn’t shaved my legs, I could still be lovely. When you stopped speaking to me, I went back to thinking I was sad, and annoying, and boring. When we stopped hanging out I forgot how to be the life of the party, how to laugh unselfconsciously, that I could still be fun.

When you found someone new I remembered the fat on my stomach, and my mismatched eyes, and my frizzy hair. I remembered how sometimes I can’t bear to be around people because I’m anxious, I remembered how I was afraid to show my body, I remembered how I was no fun because I won’t drink, or smoke, and I felt again like the girl that no one has ever wanted to be.

When you changed, I felt like the same idiot who’d fallen for the sweet words of a dozen boys, only this time it was worse, because I’d known it was real, and now it felt like everything I knew was wrong. You took away all the good of you, and you took the best of me,

And I couldn’t even be sad and miss you, because you weren’t mine anymore to care about, to miss, to love. And that hurt more than all the sadness for my own self.

 Because the only thing I couldn’t forget was you.