to all the boys I've loved

Cocaine

"Addiction: The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity."

I think I'm addicted to you. Present tense.

I can still feel your hands running down my back as if I was the most fragile object in this universe and you had the power to crush my world at any given moment. I remember the words you would whisper when we were alone and you thought I was too intoxicated to commit it to memory. As if this life had actually given you someone who was equally just as fucked up as you had been. As if you wouldn't leave me again.

I choose to pretend that the nights we shared together haunt you too, because then maybe, just maybe, you're as miserable as I am. 

These hands of mine weren't made to hold anyone else's but yours and the mere thought of your lips pressing against hers makes me want to vomit but I can't keep telling myself that you're coming back.   

I guess I'm still hoping you'll choose me. 

Your reason for ending the time we spent together was simple yet so incredibly complicated. The first night we met, I remember looking to my friend and telling her it was 'you'. Freshmen year in college is not the time for a boy to settle, and that's exactly what you are. A boy. I remember telling her you had a lot of growing up to do and that when the time was right, when you were right, I would pursue you. But I guess time never works out in our favor and when I want something, someone, I have to have it. That evening at the hotel, I can't help but reminisce on the feeling I got when I saw you in the backseat of my friends car, crashing my party. 

The first night was sad and I left the bar early and went back to the hotel and cried because none of it felt right. Have you ever been surrounded by every single person who makes you happy and who loves you and still feel absolutely and utterly incomplete? 

The second night was a blur but I remember swallowing my pride and approaching you and asking you to dance because it was completely out of my character and I was tired of being me. And we danced until 'closing time' played and the bar shut down and we kissed and my God did the world stop for a split second. The type of kiss I can't describe. The type of kiss I could never get tired of. We walked home in the freezing February air, you holding onto my hand like your life depended on it, and amongst all the people who make me whole. I laughed. I truly laughed for the first time in months. You held me that night and everything just felt complete for once in my life and I slept with you that night and I shouldn't have. But when I want something, someone, I have to have it. 

When we got back home, I assumed that that was it and we would go back to be acquaintances but you didn't. Maybe that's where everything got so fucked up. You started staying at my place because I had my own room and you were stuck in a dorm the size of a closet with a roommate who drove you insane. You left your shirt at my place because you "needed an excuse to come back" but I wanted to scream at you because you didn't need any excuses with me. You know I would walk the ends of this earth for you. That I would drop anything for you. 

You took me to your fraternities date night and we dressed up and I felt as if everything was falling in line. That was the first night you held my hand in front of your 'boys'. That was the first night you claimed me at the bar when a older guy had the audacity to ask me to buy him a drink. That was the first night we got a picture together.

Weeks passed and you were distant, there's no denying that, but you've always been distant. And the nights we spent together that started with too much alcohol and ended with me holding you are the nights I will always remember. I know you're not happy and maybe that's what makes this so much harder.