Grateful For?

(Trigger Warning: Swearing/Vulgar language. Skip if you feel uncomfortable with this kind of language.)

Before I start, I’d like to say that I really am grateful. I really do appreciate what you taught me in that short time we spent together, whether that be negative or positive. You taught me, and perhaps that’s a good thing. I really am grateful, seriously. Please don’t take it the wrong way. It was just a writing prompt. And I hope you’ll never ever find this, so you’ll always be in the dark of what I really do think of you.

I say I’m grateful, but you’re a fucking monster. I say this delicately, as if I don’t mean every single syllable. But the phrase still stands. I am eternally grateful for your teachings, so much in gratitude, just as I was so much in love. It must have been childish, childish love to you, or perhaps childish, childish love to both of us, because I know if I knew what you would have done to me, I wouldn’t have committed. I wouldn’t have written those endless love poems, I wouldn’t have dreamed those dreams, wouldn’t have said those words. Words wasted on you. But I am grateful.

Toxicity is tossed around a lot these days. But not in your case. Fucking toxic monster. Toxic is a phrase you deserve so much. So so much. I’m truly sorry, but I’m not. I’m grateful. I’m grateful you graced me with you presence as long as you did. And I’m sorry you had to put up with me, even thought you knew - you knew - it never meant anything to you and never would. You’d never miss anyone. Didn’t miss anyone. Not even me. A gap year doesn’t matter, you said. Our year mattered, maybe not to you, but to me you were a blessing dressed in mom jeans and crop tops. You were the cutest thing I’d ever seen. That was my first mistake. But I am grateful.

My time was wasted on you. Fucking toxic, useless monster. I apologise, vulgar language is never acceptable, but I’m sure you can agree that you deserve it. I have friends, but you are certainly not one of them. Your humour is terrible, if that’s what it is. Using my love for you - my love, not yours - to gain ground in arguments? You built a tower around yourself, walls so high I craned my neck, using the ink I wasted on you and the thoughts I wasted on you and everything that was wasted on you. But I am grateful.

Why am I grateful? Some part of me wants to shout the answer from the rooftops. Some part of me knows the answer. Knows it off by heart. But I side with the other part. The other part that doesn’t know anything anymore. Pushing me down, always pushing me down - it was just your humour, you say? Fucking humour. Bullshit. BullSHIT. BULLSHIT! I have humour. My friends that you met and said were strange - they have humour. Your humour is pain. Your humour is dry and cracked and ignorant and a joy, and a wound. A wound. A scab, picked open by an impatient child. The child is me. I couldn’t see the details until they hit me like a freight train, and of course by then I had fallen. And it was embarrassing to see others have to pick me up and dust me off.

Ah ha. Perhaps I’m grateful that you showed me to look for the qualities of ‘bad eggs’ early on, so I don’t get hurt later? No, saying you’re a bad egg is an understatement. Took everything I ever believed about the goodness of humanity and squished it under your Converse shoes. And oh, you really were a sight to behold. I think that was my second mistake. Beauty does not mean you cannot commit monstrous actions. You are certainly beautiful - perhaps that is understating it - but are you gentle? Kind? Merciful? Moral? No!

Or maybe I’m grateful you broke my happy image of human kindness? I believed in such euphoric things: I thought that humans could be good. I thought that everyone could be taught to be sensitive. And oh lord, remember when I thought you loved me? Ha! Childish foolishness. How could you love me? How? You couldn’t, is the answer. And oh, you made sure that you didn’t. That was my third mistake, perhaps - piecing my image of the world in the wrong way. If I could have avoided that…perhaps I could have avoided the pain? Or was your grip inevitable?

Oh! Grateful for the time, maybe? The joyous moments, like when you rested your cheek on my shoulder in that French cafe. Like when you admitted, with a happy grin on your face, that you did feel the same. Like when you kissed my cheek and booped my nose, leaving me in a trance. Like when you sent me those flirty texts that you clearly meant at the time (maybe?). Grateful for the time we spent together? Before you turned a decaying leaf?….No.

Sigh. I don’t know. Do you see now, my love? My friend? My enemy? My hate? It’s so funny how I used to think I’d marry you, and now I’d give anything to say this to your face and yell vulgarities in your face. Do you see now, the repercussions? I ever run into you, when I’m wiser and older and perhaps quite bolder, I may either scream and roar and shout at you, or simply just cry. Tears were wasted on you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have more. Who wouldn’t? Woe is me - but not woe is you, of course. You won’t miss anyone, like you said. Except, certainly, your friends who you said didn’t like me. Well, my dear, I have two words to say to you.