how to love them right

what you said:

i don’t think i can trust you

i don’t feel comfortable talking to you

about my depression and i should

that’s an important part of me

and i should be able to talk to you

but i don’t think you want to hear it

what i said:

i know i don’t always understand

and i know i don’t always know

what to say

but i want to be there for you

i just need to wrap my head around it

you shook your head, then:

you see that’s the problem

you still think it’s some cute

romance story

you’re not going to save me

that isn’t how this works

you’re too wrapped up in yourself

and how it affects you

always about you

isn’t it

then i was crying, and:

i’m trying

i swear i’m trying

and then came the final blow:

no

you aren’t

—and that was how we ended

everybody told me that you hated me.

“he thinks you’re a bitch,”

they said,

“he hates you.”

and deep down,

i think i always knew

that they were feeding me

poison,

but i drank it anyway.

toxins clouded my mind

as i said,

“i hate him too.

he’s a piece of shit.”

i never heard it from you

but i believed it,

because i thought

it was what

i deserved.

—i had brought this on myself

the biggest crime

was that i was so upset

about our breakup

ruining my image

that i never once

thought about

whether or not

you were okay

if this brought on

a bout of depression

if this made you

want to hurt yourself

maybe

just maybe

for once

i should have

thought about

whether you were

in more pain than me.

—you were right, i was selfish

i told myself, i am not a rehabilitation center.

women do not exist just to fix impossibly broken things.

but you never treated me that way.

i am not a rehabilitation center, this is true.

i am not somebody who exists only to try and fix what i am not able to.

but i was, in that moment, a coward.

i felt your rough edges and blanched at the slightest prick of blood.

and i chalked it up to being immature. i even blamed it on the one before you. i cried that i actually wasn’t ready for something new. but i had known that from the beginning, had buried that truth deep in the ground. i dug it from its grave only when i needed something to defend my actions.

but i was a coward.

i was afraid that i wouldn’t be able to pull away from my wounds to help tend to yours. i was afraid that you had too many glass shards embedded in your skin to help me pull out the few i had in mine.

so, in the end, i wasn’t afraid of you. no.

i was just afraid of myself.

you told me,