skinny love

It was hard at first, but I know I had to do it. I had to pack up and move on just like everyone else had done.There were pieces of me that wouldn’t move on though. More like pieces of him that I wouldn’t let go of. Everyone had said how perfect we were. Like kids in love. Except we weren’t just kids in love. We were two people who had found their better half. That’s what he was  what he is to me; my better half.

I remember that day like it was just yesterday. I woke up like any other day, and why wouldn’t I have? Like always I got dressed and made my way to his house. I walked up the same three cobblestone steps that lead to the big wooden door of his home. I put my key into the stiff lock only to find that it had already been unlocked. Unusual, but nothing that would alarm me too much. When I entered the small condo everything was silent. I called out his name telling him I was here but there was no answer. He must have been sleeping or in the shower like he usually was when I came early in the morning. I walked down the familiar hallway to his bedroom. The door was slightly ajar so I knew he was up. I pushed the door back, only to see his bed neatly made, like he hadn’t even slept in it. I shuffled across the carpeted floor to the bathroom, noticing the light was on. I called out his name once again but no answer. I opened the door to the bathroom and saw him lying on the cold floor. I rushed over to him holding his limp body in my arms. The empty pill bottle was still in his hand. I don’t remember much after that, just a lot of screaming and crying after calling 911. The doctors had told me that he had taken the whole bottle. 44 pills was all it took to lose my better half. 

I found the letter he wrote to me in my bathroom drawer, five days after he had died. It was the first day I had even pulled myself out of bed. In it he told me how sorry he was for doing this to me, but that he couldn’t take it anymore. He told me that I was not to blame, and if it weren’t for me he would have been gone a long time ago. He wanted me to know that he hated himself for having to put me through this, but suicide was his only option. I cried a lot that day. 

Ten days after finding the letter, I was still pinned to my bed. I wasn’t just sad and brokenhearted I was jealous; jealous of him. He was okay now, while I had to try to patch up the hole he left in my heart. I had to deal with the fact that he was no longer here. I would never have him to play with my hair while we watched The Notebook for the billionth time. I would never be able to intertwine my fingers with his as we sat cross-legged on his soft mattress. I would never get to listen his heart thud while I lay on his chest. I would never be able to feel his arms wrap around me while he sang me to sleep. I would never get to hear him tell me he loves me over and over again. I would never be able to talk to him on the phone for hours and hours. I would never be able to feel his hot breath on my neck as he whispered little things into my ear. I would never feel his lips on mine ever again. But most importantly I would never feel him again.

Days had past since his funeral, and I still couldn’t move. Months had gone by and I still had not left my house. People didn’t get it anymore. His death was just something that had happened in the past, and it was time to continue on with their lives.

It took me one year, six months, two weeks, and five days for me to get better. I had visited his grave every single day that I could, but now it was hard for me to even think of going there. I wanted to believe that I was in a nightmare, and that I would wake up and he would be lying next to me but that never happened. I didn’t want to do the same thing that he had done to me, but like him it was my only option.

And 44 pills was all it took, for two better halves to become one.

I used to think that I knew exactly what love felt like. That would be because I thought I was in love. He never carried my books to class. He barely held my hand in public. And you better bet if his friends came towards us, he would walk off with them leaving me in the dust. But there was something that pulled me to him. Like a magnet that was too strong to resist. I didn’t figure out that this “love” I was feeling wasn’t real until I had given it all away.

We had dated for six months until it happened. I had always said that I would have waited until I was in senior year or completely and utterly in love  when I was going to lose my virginity, and I was neither in this case. He made me believed I loved him, and honestly I did think I was. We went back to his house after school on a Wednesday afternoon. I still remember the weather that day and every moment of it. His parents were both working late so we had the place to ourselves. I remember laying there on the bed, his lips gently caressing mine. When he reached for my pants I didn’t resist like I have done countless many times before. My friends had told me that if I didn’t give him what he wanted he would be gone just like that, and I honestly could not stand losing him. Within minutes I was there on my back completely naked, my bare sole and everything waiting for him. His eyes wandered up and down my body like a tiger looking at his next meal. I didn’t realize it then, but that’s all I was to him; a piece of meat. It only lasted five minutes until he was finished but it felt like hours of painful actions that I never wanted to relive. We quickly got dressed and sat on the edge of his mattress and the silence and awkwardness was all that filled the room. I still can hear the harsh words in my head that he said to me, “Well now that we are finished you can leave.” I remember looking at him and tears just streaming down my face.

Not only did he take my virginity but he had taken my heart and just threw them both away like it never mattered at all. To him all I was, was the girl that he would hump then dump. It wasn’t love that I felt, it was desire. A desire to be wanted by someone. To matter to someone. All the time that I thought I was madly in love with him, I was just madly in love with the thought. The thought of the feeling you can’t just make yourself feel. The feeling l-o-v-e.