I lived a good life excerpt

When I met her she was so damaged and so beautiful. Now that I look back at this relationship, I didn’t stand a chance. She was this smart girl stuck in the wrong gears, in this loveless relationship in which he treated her like dirt and she didn’t think there was anything better. The first night we met, we left the party, and stayed up the entire night talking about our lives and our darkest secrets. We shared things with each other than we kept secret with everyone else, and a strange part of me seemed to remember her as if she was the girl I have searched for my entire life. I didn’t feel so empty anymore. We immediately made another date for the second night and spent another night talking and sharing cell phone numbers and beginning a long ( I mean LONG) relationship of texts and calls and (in the beginning) dates.

Everything she did in her childhood I had done. Everything she experienced, I had experienced. Everything she dreamed, I dreamed. Everything she read, I read. She was my counterpart, my perfect puzzle piece and since I noticed that, I found myself becoming very much attached to this girl that just needed someone to hold her and tell her that even if her life sucked in the past, it will be better in the future.  So phone call after phone call, text after text, email after email, I fell in love with how happy she sounded when I called her, how much she smiled when we saw each other, and even how guilty she was when she slipped off the proverbial wagon and thought I would leave her.

When I met her, she was this broken kid who woke up knowing that day will be the day she dies. Every morning she’d try to convince herself that the pain was going to end soon and all would be okay and she lived her life expecting it to end, needing it to end. But it didn’t. And then I came along and wouldn’t let that happen. The more she told me she wasn’t worth loving, the more I loved her and wanted her to see how worthy she was of love. She used to pull me to her sometimes, and search my pockets for anything that would take the pain away- cigarettes, chocolate, pain meds, etc. Most often she took some of my migraine medication and I never knew what she expected to find in my pockets, so I started surprising her. I started to carry small things in my pockets to cheer her up: small pieces of candy, glass figurines, and sometimes, rarely, jewelry. I never bought her a ring though, maybe I should have. Each time she’d find what I bought her, her green eyes would light up and the light inside her would shine through, making me fall more in love with her. I became addicted to her in the worst kind of way- the impossible to deny –novel/movie- once in a lifetime -kind. 

I Loved Her

     I loved her in the most toxic ways possible.
     I loved her when she loved me, when all was well and she would pull me to her and ask me silly things like if I loved her, or if she was beautiful. I loved her when she'd bolt out of the shower wrapped in my towel and left wet footprints on my hardwood floors. I loved her when she dropped her towel in front of the bed, threw herself under the covers next to me, and cling to me to absorb my warmth. I loved the stubborn way in which she'd argue with me that she was right even when she knew she wasn't. I loved her when she was mine, late at night, hiding from her demons in my bed, after a few glasses of chocolate milk when she'd tell me stories about her childhood. I loved her despite the darkness she cloaked herself in, despite the twinkle of hatred in her eyes when she'd tell herself she's stupid, despite the track marks on her arms, despite her scars and lines... and most of all, I loved her despite her efforts to make me run away.
     I loved her when she didn't love me, when she wasn't mine. When she'd tell me about the nights she spent with whomever she loved, when she'd tell me that this was the one that would make all her problems go away. I loved her when she forced me to like them, when she defended them against me, and when she chose them over me. I loved her when she called me mean and told me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I loved her when she convinced herself that these guys could handle her in the long run and how she'd change for the better if they loved her. I loved her when they'd break her heart and she would come to me crying and bleeding, telling me this one was the last one, telling me she wouldn't survive the night. Oh how I loved her then.
     I loved her most when she bled and cried because it was then that I hoped, while nursing her wounds, that she would realize she loved me too, but she never did. And so I loved her, still, in the most toxic ways.