Hey... It's me. Arthsy. Your ex from college, remember?

We dated for a year. I was 24. Freshmen on Hellsbourne. We clicked. Same tastes, you were cute. Easy chemistry, happened naturally. I had boyfriends before you of course, but i thought that relationships weren't... Well. That much of a big deal. Or more like it couldn't.

Until i lost you.

I fell for you hard, but the mess that was my head didn't call that "love". I WAS happy. But I had an idealization of what love was supposed to be, like... Above happiness? Something all consuming, maddening, like those songs we used to listen to. But... , how do i explain it?
Love can't be a catch all "umbrella" term, it only makes it harder to understand. No one gets it. I didn't get it.

I fucked up badly. We were in a concert, i was drunk, that guitarist i always had a crush on winked at me. I saw you talking to the lead singer, a woman that was everything i wasn't. Powerful, famous, smoking hot, had that aura around her... I felt... Jealous. I know it's childish. I know it doesn't justify what i did.

I wanted to feel special, be that girl that stood amongst a crowd naturally. Wanted all, and for you to look only at me.
I thought that getting a rockstar was a once in a lifetime chance. I cheated on you.
It felt good for a couple of minutes. A rockstar picking me? God, i must be fucking special.

I wasn't. It wasn't.

It felt like a high at the moment, and falling from a building headfirst into the asphalt when it was over. Partly because only after i realized that 20 minutes of backstage clout wasn't what i thought, and mostly for the price i paid for that.

Hurting someone feels bad if you have a conscience. Hurting someone you love? Someone who loves you? Someone who trusts you never expecting to be fucking stabbed in the back like this? It hurt me as much as it did to you.

You broke up with me of course. I can't put into words what it was like to wake up knowing that you were gone. Regret doesn't cut it, doesn't even start to explain what it feels like.

Love truly is all consuming, just not the way i thought. Rockstars don't cuddle 2 AM in my bedroom while my scary dad is asleep. Don't drive you to college just because they want to be there every morning.

Don't make you feel like you matter just because you're there.

Is being present every day, me taking part into your happiness, you taking part of mine. And when we're sad? That hand that holds you on the campus being the one that drags you back. Love is trying even when the feeling isn't there at that exact moment, because if i loved you before i know i can love you again, i know you deserve to be loved. Trying because i need to convince myself that it is over, and it shouldn't be easy to convince myself of that.

Have you ever heard a song that tells you that? Of course not, you can't put that into a track of three minutes. Not in a way that makes you truly understand.

But sorry doesn't cut it. We always take that for granted, don't we? "I say sorry, you see how sad i am". If i cry and show others how regretful i am, maybe things can come back to the way they were. Like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. That's more like pity. It just doesn't.

I had to make up to you somehow if i were to have you back, but i couldn't find a way. I was a mess.

3 months of binge drinking, bottling up my feelings, hoping that somewhere on the universe a god would take pity on me and give me a miracle. God i was so fucking stupid, hah... My dad helped me, " therapy let's work on these cars on my garage". It kept me from sinking further. I wished it was you.

We tried to "coexist" in that fucking building for one more year. We had friends in common, a diploma to earn, a life to live. Focus on that, you on your side, me on mine.

I told myself i could do it. I can't cry for you all my life, for your broken heart and mine. I had places to be, things to do. So i tried to forget. It kinda worked. Humans are so good at adapting aren't they? I know, i'm a biologist.

...The do i know. I wasn't thinking about you as much anymore.

But i could feel it.

Every hook up after you didn't hit the same. Every time i heard "I love you" an invisible hand in my chest squeezed my heart. "I'm a mess, what if i do it all over again? I can't break his heart. I don't deserve to hear this."

I don't watch romance because it feels alien to me. Like, i can't be that person. That happy person.

I was spoiled on the inside already. So i doubled down on the Biology thing. I let go of my Red Star as a way to cope.

Your absence was grounding in it's own way "pancake", it reinforced that mantra i kept telling myself. I shouldn't be loved, i should be "Arthsy the Biology major". You weren't there, but that meant you were there in a way you know?

And god, where i ended up is kinda funny. A researcher on the remote "Snake Island", where only a handful of people can stay. I could only see my dad once a year. The perfect place for me to work as a researcher and larp as a hermit.

I knew i would never see you again. I hoped you were happy. Hoped i could take away all the hurt i did to you, to us, or at least someone would for you. But again, sorry doesn't cut it, yet "sorry" was the last thing i did.

And that FUCKING god that i prayed for back then sent you here as a new researcher fucking FIVE YEARS LATER?! The universe does craft the best jokes sometimes.

And now... What will it be of my Red Star when you are around me every single day?

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