I was listening to tolerate it by Taylor Swift, and it reminded me of someone who let me down.

There's someone I know that really let me down. He thought he was helping, and I believe that. That’s what makes this harder, that's why I'm still grieving even after a few weeks. The worst part is that I don't think he'll ever know how much that betrayal hurt...he was the last person left for me. I care about him so much, but the risk of bringing him back is just too big. He doesn't know how much this hurts, this is the most I've ever grieved and in what world could he ever know that? It sounds ridiculous...nobody is dead, and this man shouldn't even mean so much to me. He's not meant to, I know just one version of him and that's not the version that's meant to belong to people that feel like me. 

People think it's a crush, something fleeting and shallow. But I  love him. Not in the way you might think. Very few people would truly understand...but this is real love I'm feeling. Not romantic- I mean a slightly desperate form of philia or storge mixed in with some sort of spiritual connection. It sounds stupid, ridiculous, one-sided...but this is my truth.

I just need someone to hear it. Maybe you understand somehow.

I opened myself up to him, and I know he didn’t mean to overstep. He thought he was doing the right thing - protecting me, maybe...or easing the weight he thought I was carrying. But what he didn’t realise was that I wasn’t asking for protection. I wasn’t crying out for rescue.

I was asking for guidance. For trust. For someone to talk to me without treating me like I didn’t know my own mind.

For understanding.

He didn’t get that, and because of that - he made everything worse. He told someone who has let me down countless times, and he knew that was the opposite of what I wanted. He didn't even tell me first...he could have at least warned me. I felt exposed...and more people found out about what I'd told him. It got so much worse from there. I felt like my emotions were being dissected.

I still feel like he understands what it feels like to be unable, truly unable, to trust. I'm not stupid, I know shit happened in his life. I'm perceptive enough.

I think that makes me feel worse.

But I can’t tell him that this feels like I've been shot in the heart, not because i’m scared he’ll be angry, but because I know it would hurt him...and because he'd try to remove that bullet, and that'd make me bleed more and potentially cause further complications. I don’t want to be the one to make him feel small. I don’t want to make him cry. And that's because I know how that feels, and he doesn't deserve that at all.

None of this was supposed to be about him. I always had a gut feeling about him...but he really wasn’t meant to matter so much. He just kind of appeared at the right time, said the right things, and suddenly I trusted him more than most people in my life. He was there for a brief time when nobody else could be...and I think that's something I regret.

I say that, but I don’t regret it. What I regret is that it turned out like this... and feeling like I couldn't give him anything substantial that could help him. I'm so glad he stopped being so self-depreciating though, after I told him to stop I never heard him say that word again. He did care. I know he did. Maybe too much, maybe in the wrong ways...but I think he wanted to do right by me.

He just didn’t know how.

The truth is, he reminds me of myself. The carefulness, the intensity, the way he notices too much and says too little. That’s why i thought we understood each other, why i still think maybe, somewhere, we did. And I'm probably wrong...but a girl can hope.

He saw me as small. And I am young, but I'm not only that. I have my own values, my own sense of the world... and just because I haven’t lived thirty years, that doesn’t mean I don’t know who I am or what I want. I still have a lot to learn in life, but I know that I didn't want this at all. I wanted to be seen, not a pity party and an attempt to solve all my problems.

He crossed my boundaries, and I let it slide because i thought maybe he knew better or that I was just driving people away again.

But he didn’t know better, he just thought he did.

I really did try, and I know there's parts of me he'll never be able to begin to understand. So much for older and wiser...now there’s this kind of silence between us that neither of us will break. I’m too scared to truly lose him, and he’s probably too scared to be told he failed me. Perhaps losing him would hurt less - it'd feel cleaner.

I wish we’d met in different circumstances. I wish he was sixteen. I wish we could’ve just been friends. Not complicated. Not heavy with context. Just two people who saw each other clearly, and didn’t flinch.

But that’s not the life we’re in. And he was probably younger than me when he was sixteen. So I’ll just sit with this chapter that only exists in my story, not his..and hope that's enough.