Ten Seconds or More

That's Not The Hard Part

I sat next to my best friend of twelve years, since we were toddlers. 

"How did you know you loved him?" she asked me as we both stared straight ahead, at the city lights from the top of the hill. It was dark out, the stars shining bright above us, surrounding the full moon. 

"God, I don't know," I whispered. I shuffled my feet, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, looking down. "Maybe it was when I broke down because of my family and instead of bashing me for it, he told me it was okay. When it started raining on us, he didn't care. He'd let us get wet if it meant he could keep a hold of me and make me feel better."

She looked at me, her hair swiveling over her shoulders, blue eyes shining in the moonlight. I couldn't look at her. 

"I knew I loved him more the night we got high for the first time. I looked at him and just... I don't know, something about him screamed beautiful. He was not the greatest looking by far. He couldn't fight for shit and grew up completely opposite of me. To be honest, I was only with him out of boredom. I took him from her because she took him first. I was only taking him back. Out of boredom. To prove I could, even. But it wasn't because I wanted him. No, that didn't show up until later. Months into my boredom escapade taking the wrong turn, I realized I let it because I wanted him. No games," I told her, still looking down, ashamed to admit that I, in a way, not only stole him from someone else, but hadn't wanted him at first anyway. 

I had no defense. Just that I was young, I was stupid. I wanted to show the other girl that she may have taken him from me, but it was only because I let him go. And that I could take him back if I wanted to. So I did. 

"If you didn't want him to begin with, why did it hurt you so bad when he left again?" she asked me. I shrugged in response. 

"Losing him was not the hard part. That was easy, that... Even though that hurt, like someone had ripped apart of me out of myself, it was not the hardest part. The hardest part was finding myself again. Because I put up with so much after realizing I loved him. His mom calling me names. Him going behind my back to talk to girls. His family forcing drugs I never wanted down my throat, even if it was just birth control. Being told the things I was told," I shivered. The flashes of everything I was put through came flooding back into my head. Some I refused to admit. "I couldn't explain to anyone why I was too scared to talk. It was explaining to people why my mood could go from bubbly to timid at the drop of a hat, mention of one word, or a single wrong movement. 

"The hardest part is watching people lose their patience with me for constantly apologizing, thinking I'd done something wrong. Excessively apologizing. It was listening to people tell me they were afraid to talk to me again because they didn't want to step on a landmine of emotional damage. It was living in a home you knew was permanent and still making plans to leave because that relationship damaged your belief in permanent, tainting the idea that it could be real for you. The hardest part was knowing I was broken, knowing WHAT was broken...and having no idea how to fix any of it."

My best friend looked at me with a pained expression as I looked back at her. 

"So yes, I loved him. And watching him leave was hard. But I lost myself because of him, and I never even noticed until it was too late. So the hard part was never losing him, it was always learning to love me again."