dear dad,

The first one was my first heartbreak

he was the man that was never supposed to leave me.

Him leaving

taught me many things.

When he left

he taught me how to build up walls

so that i could never be hurt like that again.

He taught me that promises can be broken.

He taught me that I couldn’t count on anyone but myself.

…

And then you came.

You were the best dad.

You were my best friend.

You came into my life when i needed you the most.

You loved me as if i were your own.

In many ways

you were worse than the first one.

You broke down every wall i built.

You made me trust you.

You made me love you.

You promised you would never leave me.

…

And then you did.

You broke your promise.

And you broke me.

I made myself a promise many years ago.

I promised myself i would never fight for a man to stay in my life when they clearly wanted to leave.

You leaving

hurt a million times worse than the first one

and now

just like him

you don’t get to come back.

Want

I want to run away and hide

I want to forget this pain

The pain of being

Hurt

Abandoned

Unloved

Broken

I don’t want to feel anymore

***

But I guess we don’t always get what we want.

Her

I wake up in the middle of the night

The first thing that crosses my mind

Is you

I wonder if you are awake too

I go back to sleep and when I wake up again

It is still you

When I am in the middle of my day

You are still on my mind

I try so hard to push you out

You don’t care about me

If you did you would be here still

At night is when it hits me the hardest

I want to talk to you

Hear your voice

They say the first thing you forget about someone is their voice

It is the truth

I can’t remember

I want to check up on you

Make sure you are okay

I keep myself busy at night

Forcing you out of my mind takes a lot of effort

I am tired of thinking about you

And I am even more tired of missing you

time

Time. I don’t understand time. How much time should I put into you? I don’t want to give you all my time because you could hurt me. With time comes effort, obviously. So how much of that should I give to you too? Do I make my effort obvious? If I am too obvious then you will know how I feel, and if you don’t feel the same then it would ruin everything we already have. Do I attempt to hide it? I’v been doing that, and I think you know it too. Maybe you don’t know it and I have hidden it so much that you think I am not interested at all and that’s why you put your own time and effort into others. I don’t understand what you want from me or what I want from you. I want you to be happy, but even more I want you to be happy with me. Is that selfish of me? I have been hurt so many times before, I don’t want to go through it all again. If I let myself I could fall so hard for you. But, I don’t know how. How am I supposed to open myself up to you and make my self vulnerable? When is the right time to do that? When is the right time to “man up” and allow you to know what is going on inside my head? When am I supposed to tell you I have never looked at you as just a friend?