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You were a lot more beautiful in my head.

In my head, you were the person I remembered you being when we first met. Charming, funny, and all-around lovely person. But that’s just it. You were only these things in my head. In reality, you transformed into the being you truly were right before my very eyes. Time after time, you showed me again and again just how cruel you could be and intended to be. I desperately wanted something to just hold onto because I thought anything was better than being alone. I couldn’t find the beauty at the time of standing alone rather than standing in the shadow of someone else’s perceived beauty.

 I chose to mask your bitterness with misunderstanding. I decided to cover your crude remarks with just severe criticism. When I looked into your eyes and felt the digging pains in my stomach’s pit, I chose to put on sunglasses of misconception. I decided to hide the repulse deep down inside when you felt the need to touch me, but again I thought being touched was better than to have ever at all. I didn’t know any better. This was just what friends do, right? I was just reading more into it, right? 

You deserved for me to tell you the truth. I should have told you the truth, but I chose to stay silent out of fear of my voice and selfish reasons. I thought what you were expressing was love and never stopped to realize until it was too late that it was just unrequited. Here is the truth.

You are the painting I wish I never painted. Every remark I took to heart. How could you have expected me not to? At such a young age, your words had an impact, and each dig chopped me down. At such a young age, you took so much out of me. I never had a chance even to develop my beauty because you quickly felt the need to show me that I wasn’t. But yet you think just because you called me beautiful once that it excuses all the other times you treated me like I was the scum on the bottom of your shoe. 

You knew how to paint this picture at such a young age that only I could seem to have found the beauty in. 

There are scars I will always have because of you. Things I will never get rid of, but I have learned to breathe a little easier, a little lighter. I have managed to paint an even more beautiful out of the narrative you gave me. A narrative that is my own. No lies, no tricks, no false perceptions, a truer me. 

Because of that, I understand this,

You are not the gem I thought you were. In my head, you sparkled in the sunlight, but in actuality, I just had dust in my eye. I now shine brighter than your shadow. I now walk with the light. What I think I regret the most is that you continuously led me to believe that this was love. This was what love looked like. I wish you would have just admitted it was unrequited love. You didn’t cushion the blow for having not admitted it. 

I don’t entirely regret what happened because if I did, I wouldn’t be in this moment to understand the difference between reality and fantasy even when the thin line between becomes unbearably hard to distinguish. There is beauty in what happened between us, and the beauty is in me finding my light. I can never get back those years even if I tried. At least I have gotten back my sanity, and I have gotten back my worth. 

I no longer look at things through clouded lenses because beauty isn’t something that has to hide. You will see it for what it truly is, and it will shine just as bright as you could imagine.