person who has done bad things, not the other way around. and

i sit here, always, waiting for you to come back and maybe, just

maybe, make it a reality.

21 things about habits (and you)

1.i don’t remember starting to bite my nails; i just know that one day i started and i haven’t stopped since. i think that’s kind of how our love worked.

2.i could only love you magnificently, with everything in me, or love you not at all. when you had me, you had all of me. there was no compromise. that’s probably why it hurt so much to leave you—no fading, no gentle release. just cut, right down the middle. severed clean.

3.when people ask what happened to us, my first instinct is still to explain it in a way that makes it all my fault.

4.they say it takes 21 days to form or break a habit, but it took me exponentially less time to get accustomed to apologizing for you and exponentially more time to stop.

5.21 days is how long it took you to wrap me entirely around your finger. how fitting.

6.i learned to say “sorry” even when the words should have been coming from your mouth. i said it even when i knew that. i said it even when i told you i wouldn’t.

7.it took me around 21 months to figure out just how fucked-up you left me. i buried all of it when i left you. that alone was enough. i let the wounds get infected. dig deeper into my skin. and now i’m stuck with these ugly cuts, watching them slowly scab, and break, and bleed, and scar.

8.i hate writing about you, but like everything else involving you in my life, it is damn near impossible to stop.

9.i miss you, still. it’s like an itch i know i’m not allowed to scratch.

10.i don’t know if it’s okay that i still wonder how you’re doing like i really want to know the answer.

11.with time, this will grow stale. even if the wounds remain half-open. somebody else will give me something to write about. i’m sure those words will still reek of you, anyway.

12.you have no clue what you did to me. you never will.

13.i don’t even understand what you did to me.

14.i thought this would never happen to me. i thought people might break my heart and for a while, it would ache but then it would slowly fade and i would get better. i wasn’t prepared for this. in all my hopeless romanticism and nostalgic tendencies, i wasn’t prepared for this.

15.i have beaten out the habits you instilled in me but a part of me always jumps first to the excuses when somebody wrongs me. jumps straight to the “sorry,” ready to fall out of my mouth.

16.maybe i’d rather see the best in people before i see that not everything bad that happens to me is my fault. it’s how i love, i think.