Philip Da Silva

Because more than a year later, you've left me with so many deeply seeded insecurities, I don't know how to be myself anymore. It's been more than a year since it ended, since our final words to each other, but I still can't forget you. The way it hurt, the way it strung, it still hurts. It still rings so loudly and so clearly in every relationship I have today. I'm scared.

We don't talk anymore so you'll never know how much you hurt me. You'll never know how you destroyed me, how you managed to cement my insecurities. How even though those text messages are gone, the tone still sinks into my memory, into my current reality.

It doesn't, you don't hurt me the same way anymore, but it still does. I'm still not OK. The way you hurt me, it is still echoed in every relationship I have, in every missing trust, in every frightened jolt and defence. I'm defensive, always ready to bolt, to arm myself against something else. I don't know how to enjoy myself without waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm scared. I feel like an animal waiting to be caught to be slaughtered.

I don't know how to forget you. I don't know how to stop letting you haunt me today. You destroyed me. I drifted for so long, I was so lost after you. I was hurt. I didn't know what I was doing, and for much of it, I didn't care. I just wanted to forget you. Any way I could convince myself, even for a second, that you were forgotten, that was good. I wanted another one of you. You, who once brought me so much peace and then brought me so much chaos and struggle. You haunt me. I look for you and I see you everywhere. Every time I seem to have forgotten you, you come back to me in another way. Tonight, I have an issue with a guy and you are what clutches at my heart, you are what punches me in the gut, leaves me for dead. You are why I am crying again. You are why I feel hurt, in pain, abandoned. You've been gone for so long, but the way you haunt me, it's like you never left. Your hurt still rings loudly, clearly, deeply.

You destroyed me, but you'll never know that.