Poison (and Antidote)

So... I was feeling randomly awful and wrote to get my feelings out. Jared found what I wrote and wrote a reply to me. It's at the bottom of this post. Oh man, do I love him.

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Love hurts.

I guess I should clarify: love in and of itself doesn’t hurt.

Remembering a love that you once had that’s no longer there- that hurts.

Some say love never dies, but I’ve found that this is not the case. If love didn’t die, there wouldn’t be a hole in my heart where he used to be.

Watching helplessly as poison creeps into a relationship... that hurts, too.

***

The one with hair darker than night: he ended up being one hell of a messed up kid, but for what it’s worth the good parts of the relationship; the feeling of his arms around me, the way we would cuddle and watch T.V. together... those parts were lovely.

Looking back, I know that I didn’t love him, but I still miss his friendship.

We haven’t talked in a year.

***

The one with glacial eyes and flaxen hair: he was the one, I used to think. Time spent with him was magical... at first.

Then things went south: I began to worry, doubts began to plague me, and I began to change as my self-esteem wilted and uncertainty ate away at me from the inside out. I changed as a result of it.

Cigarettes, weed, alcohol: all of them entered my life in an attempt to feel good, to feel secure, but in the end they ended up chasing him away from me faster than anything else.

I know without a doubt that I did love him.

We used to call ourselves the musketeers, we were a dynamic duo: friends forever.

We haven’t seen one another since we broke up in June.

***

The one with sea-green eyes and brunette hair: still reeling from the doubts and insecurities that came upon me in my earlier relationship, this one saved me from myself. He brought me back into the light and taught me to love again; not just him, but myself as well.

He’s a healing balm, and I’m so thankful I have him.

Except... once again there’s something new that’s starting gnawing away at me: I don’t know exactly what to call it; the closest I can come to naming it is that it’s a mixture of jealousy and despair.

Poison. That’s what it is.

He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I’ll never be like him. I could starve myself and dye my hair a thousand times and I’ll never come close to scratching the surface of what it means to be the boy with sea-green eyes.

It’s eating away at me.

***
By Jared:

The boy with the amber eyes and the perfect smile lies in my bed almost every day. I look at him with scanning eyes, my gaze wiping across him in the same way I love wiping my hands across him. His body is so smooth, so thin and athletic. He flexes in the mirror all the time and while at the same time it makes me feel tiny, the gleam in his eyes makes me smile. He looks so proud, but I know he’s judging himself.

Every day I look in the mirror and find imperfections, everyone does. But nobody does more than the boy with the perfect smile. He says it eats away at him, this poison of self-loathing that he has conjured up inside of him, just as his favorite WoW character can conjure up a nifty little red health potion. So why doesn’t he make himself a potion, but this time, to give him confidence.

The boy with the perfect smile is always there for me, through the good times and the bad. When I’m cranky or depressed, he’s always there with a smile and a hug, an encouraging word, or a pat on the back. Nobody could ask for a better boyfriend; I’m sure that I couldn’t. And yet, the mirror that this boy uses seems to be tainted, for he doesn’t quite see what I see. His beautiful smile, his kickin’ muscles, and his cute black hair. Somehow, some way, the boy misses these things and dwells on his insecurities. It makes me sick to see him suffer, I just wish I could give him a cloudless mirror so he could see how special he truly is.

When you're feeling down...

It wasn't until I didn't get a chance to write in the communal journal in the Umbc rock garden that I realized how much I've needed to write, how much stuff I have on my mind.

I just brushed my teeth before settling down with my laptop to write this: after having kicked the habit of smoking for a month during the summer, I've somehow fallen back into having one or two a day: It's horribly unhealthy, but it helps with my stress on tons of levels. I wish I didn't have to hide the fact that I'm doing it again.

As I write this I'm wearing my ex-boyfriend Ted's hoodie. We were in love, and we used to promise each other that we would last forever; that it would never end. It ended, but we told each other that we would always be friends. That ended too, and I haven't talked to him since August. I think about him more than most people; I miss him, but I think he hates me.

Last night I ate too much for dinner, and it transported me back to when I had an eating disorder freshman summer. Four years have gone bye, and I'm still struggling not to relapse and to find the beauty in myself. It's nice when others tell me that it's there, but in the end it all comes down to me staring in a mirror and not seeing it.

A few days ago, my boyfriend went over to my house to get some stuff he had left in my room. I wasn't with him, and when he came back he innocently enough told me that my Dad and Brother, who I've always wanted to be close to but never have been, were sh*t talking me. I immediately felt like I was going to cry, and it's still on my mind.

On the bright side...

Umbc is a beautiful campus, if you know where to go: my favorite spots are the courtyard at Harbor, where there's always a lingering summer breeze and people are always hanging out at the tables, followed by the benches down by the library where the trees are large and there's a tiny lake full of koi fish.

My boyfriend is beautiful too, inside and out, and if I believed in God I think that I would thank him every day for bringing Jared into my life. As it is, I just count myself extremely lucky. <3

The schoolwork is easy enough, and I have no doubts that I'll keep my scholarship and go on in life to be successful.

I just hope that I go on to be happy.