Tyler...

You have come up a lot lately. I don’t know why. Of course, this has me thinking of you and the love we shared and you shattered. Invariably, I try and place how to ever love someone, the way I loved you, again. I don’t think it’s there. I don’t think I want it to be.

Skipping over all the details that made me the way I am, well the way I was before you anyhow, the easiest way to say it is that back then, before I was shattered, before you, I thought everything in the world was about falling in love. I thought that every time the sun went down and the stars came out was about falling in love. I thought every event, every day, every moment was about finding someone to love. I never realized what it was going to do to me when someone loved me back. It fucked me up. You…you fucked me up. All these years later and I am still your fuck up. It’s your doing and I can’t fix it. Everything, with you and I’s beginning, was beautiful, and the way it happened was as close to magic as real life sees. You, we, were everything and I just....... lost myself……

When you cheated, you absolutely ruined me. I couldn't breathe for so much longer than I would ever admit to you. Part of me still can't really get there. Get back to where I can breathe easily without focus. When we were doing the whole "still in love with each other while dating other people" thing it made everything awful. That life lived in the shades of gray was my existence for so much longer than it was for you. I don’t think your world ever went gray over me. Why is that? Didn’t I love you good enough for you to miss me a little… I know that we loved each other and it had nothing to do with me when you cheated. It took me some time but I finally figured it out. It wasn't about me. You just wanted to get away with it. Either way, you – our love and what you did with it, was the end of that girl that lived in me for all those many years that believed that love was the rhyme, reason, and purpose for every breath we take. You killed that girl so quickly that I can hardly remember her name. So much of me didn’t ever walk away from our love. It still lays there bleeding. I still worry sometimes that you will always have control over who I am because you made me this tiny thing inside that can't seem to muster confidence or trust or desire to love. I worry that I will always be this shattered excuse of a person because of how you ruined me. When I finally threw the "Tyler Box" away, I cried while doing it. I still lose my breath when I think I see you or see someone that moves like you or smiles like you. Not because I'm still in love with you, it's been so many years, Tyler. I lose my breath because I fear you. Fear seeing you and remembering all those mornings that I couldn't find the sun and all the nights I couldn't find rest after you ripped me apart. Some how though, still to this very key stroke, I feel as if I felt all those moments of pain because I lost you. Why is that? Didn’t you lose me? I’m afraid of you because I fear ever feeling that pain that lived in my chest until I couldn't remember what it felt like to not hurt that way. That pain just became who I am. Cuts salted and veins explode and some how… I fear you. I fear that moment that I lose myself in someone else and they destroy me without my consent and I am left to reinvent myself into someone that doesn't cry until she can't breathe. I don’t want to have to learn, again,  to become someone that doesn’t weep and ache until I can’t recognize those sounds and realize, horrified, when I see these sounds are my own. I know it may sound dramatic but it's the way I loved you. I’ve had too many people tell me that "I've never seen anything like you and Tyler"... Why would they tell me that? Don’t they know you ruined me? Don’t they see how awful it is to make me feel like I will never be loved again and if I am… they’ll all do just what you did. How many times can I be ruined before I just don’t get back up? Obviously, following you with Sergio was….well…. not the brightest idea. I didn’t know, then, though that he would break me too. I have spent all these years living in the shadows. Living as a ghost of the girl you stole. Could anything ever happen that allowed you to give her back to me? I am so tired of being told that it has nothing to do with you and that I have to find a way to be that girl all on my own again. Don’t they know she’s not dead in this world, don’t they know you still have her? How can I create someone new when the old heart lies with you? How many years will it take before I stop seeing our pain in every smile? How many kind words will it take, from the people who love me, to make me see that they aren’t saying it to cover lies? How many moments will I ruin because I can’t just allow myself to be in them because of all the moments you vacated and left me standing there alone with my heart in my hand? Will I ever be someone who is Me and isn’t the one that Tyler cheated on? Will you ever release my soul and allow me to be someone beautiful? What makes it hardest is that you have that girl. She is all wrapped up in every moment, every memory that was us, and you never did know her name. You never did know what you were doing to me or how you were destroying my every fiber. You didn’t care when it made so much of me leak until I went dry. You still don’t know her name, do you? The girl you stole from me. The girl who lives in your smile and your hands and your eyes. The girl who I watched dance across your eye lashes trying to get in and then trying to get free. She’s still locked in there, in your stare and your laugh and your breath. She stopped fighting for release. She accepted that you were now home. She lost her fight… You stole my fight. You stole everything about me that thought love was a color. The color of life. Why didn’t you care that you drained it to white? Why don’t you care that my heart is still white? At least if it had just small shades of something, anything, I could find the right mix to make a new color. Mix the color of the bruises that you left and make something new and, dare I say, better… You though, you drained it to white. White. Just…white. You left me with nothing. How could you do that? How could you steal my color and dangle it in front of me that way? You knew I was starving and just kept lying while you held it up to drain. You knew I loved you enough, too much, and that I would lie there while you took it away. White. I don’t know how to make something new from what you left and make it someone who can love again. I hope you love her, the girl, who used to be mine that you stole. I hope you hear our favorite songs and dance with her as she deserves to be spun by caring hands and held in loving arms. I hope you care for her when she cries and love her when she’s lonely and melt into her when you can’t stay away. I hope, so desperately, that you take care of her because she will always live in you because of what you did with us. I can’t look into your eyes but I think she will always love you and I hope, so deeply, that you will love her better than you ever loved us…