I’m not sure where to start.

You know I hate apologizing on the best of days, but admitting wrongdoing when I have no idea what I did wrong is torturous. Why should I apologize for trying to keep you safe?

You know I love you.

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have told you all those truths about yourself. No one else had the courage to point out how your dark cloud engulfs others, chews them up and hacks them out like a pile of phlegm. This is why no one wanted to be around you -- why would they choose to feel like phlegm?

I was the one who told you, when no one else had the courage, that you take up more space than is owed to you. You seep into the hearts and minds of others and don’t bother to wipe your feet. You piss all over the floor and have the audacity to wonder why you get kicked out. Someone had to tell you! You needed to be stopped.

You may think I was kicking you when you were down but in reality, I didn’t want to see you get your heart broken again. You handle it like a hot potato and gasp when it ends up on the floor. I can’t be there every, single, time to shake you and yell that you shouldn’t be surprised anymore! You stage this scene so many times yet pretend you didn’t write the lines. A pathetic, miserable performance to watch.

So I had to tell you you’re unlovable. You forced my hand!

The evidence was all there, I just made you see it. All those who left, they never wanted to be here in the first place. All those who stayed, thrive when you don’t bother them. No one could bring themselves to look you in the eyes and proclaim what a sad sap stood before them, so I rose to the occasion.

Yes, I understand now that it gave you sleepless nights. Yes, I see that you’re still scraping off the burnt on residue from this truth. Yes, I know how deep of a hole my words made you spiral into.

But regardless, you crawled out! Stronger than ever! And had I kept my mouth shut you wouldn’t have done any of that work on yourself. You’re a better person now, and I’m to thank for it, not to blame.

And yet, I suppose I could have been more tactful. An argument can be made that I could have landed softer blows, ones that weren’t as ill-timed and didn’t cut as deep. I see now that every time I cut you, I left lasting damage on myself.

Why was I so cruel to myself? Even now I can’t fully own up to how badly I wanted to destroy myself, how deserving I thought I was of such destruction.

Yet a “sorry” implies recognition of wrongdoing, and a promise to not do it again.

I’m getting around to the former, but time will tell with the latter.

I wake up to see him still sleeping. We are sprawled out on a mattress on the floor. The piles of boxes around us jog my memory of last night. After a long day of moving into a place we can finally call our own, our exhaustion took hold and convinced us that a room with no heat and only one blanket was the comfiest room in existence. I look at him again as his breath comes out steadily, warm puffs of smoke in the December air. Maybe we were right.

This recipe calls for: 

-6 cups of anxious coping mechanisms

-2 1/2 cups of meme references 

-3 tablespoons of forced laughter 

-1 tablespoon of wrathful hatred 

-1/4 tablespoon of pure spite

-2 teaspoons of the benefit (must be extracted from the doubt) 

-1/2 teaspoon of genuine giggles 

-1 pinch of unfiltered joy 

Preheat blanket for 4 hours with depression nap. 

If you can, leave bed and mix all ingredients in a bowl. Notice that you added too much or not enough of one of the ingredients. Begin crying. 

Allow tears to mix with the dry ingredients and stir slowly. Gradually stir faster and more aggressively when you remember Election Week. 

At this point, a bit of snot should be getting in the bowl as well. This is good! To make sure the tears and snot come down consistently, think about how white liberals just began to care about the systematic lynching of black people only to abandon the movement after electing our first ever black female cop into office.

When it’s reached an even consistency, slowly pour the contents over the overdue assignments that your professors didn’t give you extensions for despite the literal pandemic. 

Stare at the mess you’ve created. Your best bet is to abandon ship and go get a cake from that little store you like to cheer yourself up. Too bad being outside is illegal right now. 

Crawl back into bed. The blanket should still be warm if preheated properly. 

Sleep.

There’s a reason we are called “marginalized”.

We are not the words, we are not the lines, we ain’t even the goddam footnotes.

We are pushed aside to the outskirts of the page so that the story can continue without our pesky needs being met or addressed.

Black, brown, southeast Asian, low income, lgbtq+, immigrant and undocumented students: We are fed up with our school systems not taking our needs and our safety seriously.

We are fed up with having to demand for things because we know that simply asking will get us nowhere.

And we are fed up with being seen as dollar signs on one hand and statistics on the other.

The educational system has never chosen to side with the narrative of the marginalized, and so today, we beg, we plead, we demand, that now, in this life or death situation, the story does not continue without us.

Whaddduuupp??

Actually, don’t answer that- I know what is up. You’re super sad right now, going through a lot of mental and physical pain, writing some sad poetry, binge watching stuff you don’t care about that you usually like, and your family is concerned about you. This feels like the perfect place to say “it gets better,” but I know you won’t believe that right now, even coming from me. So I’ll say this instead: 

The headaches do stop. I know you’ve been pretty good about drinking water but the constant headaches that Advil can't even soothe do stop. It’s gonna take a minute, but they will stop. 

Also the crying- the crying stops. I know how much that annoyed you because of how dry it made your face and how tired you get after, so know that you won’t be crying every single day very soon.

Your sister is a ball of light. Start hanging out with her more and sooner. You’d be surprised how effortlessly happy a Disney movie with your sister can make you- it’s wild. 

Spoiler alert: I know you’ve been very, very alone for these past months, but do not fret! An internship is going to beckon you to seek housing with your friends. Said internship will fall through, but it’s ok cause you’re gonna be with your friends and it’s gonna be great. Your friends are great. 

But yeah, I don’t really have anything else to say, I don’t wanna spoil too much or give any advice, cause I think what you really need now is to continue to cry, continue to sulk, and continue to practice being ok with being alone. I think the fact that you miss having a person to cuddle with more than you miss him is very telling, missy.

And I don’t want you to feel stupid or anything like that because it is not your fault that you love so hard and so deeply, and I don’t want you to think that he brought that out of you. Sis, it was always there, he merely presented the opportunity to be on the receiving end. 

And I don’t want you to feel guilty about how you’ll end up handling all this post-breakup nonsense much better than your good friend, because your situations are not the same, and her brain is wired differently than yours. 

So yeah.

Talk to your mom more, interact with your dad less, sing loudly with your sister more, replay things in your mind much, much less. 

Really proud of you, and I can’t wait for you to see what’s next. 

I look for you, every time I go out, even when I know you’re not there. 

I won’t let you catch me off guard again. 

I desperately want to return your things: your book, some socks, the knife you left in my heart. I think it’s only right to return what was borrowed. 

I hear your voice when no one is talking. 

A part of me wants to speak back, to warn you of what I have planned, to tell you I don’t mean it and all is forgiven and I hope you forgive me in turn. The other part wants to rip your lying tongue out. 

I know you think you already know what I have in store. I’ve had much, much time to work the ins and outs of it, to smooth out the edges before carefully trying it on. 

But I assure you, you won’t see this coming. You’ll never see it coming, because I’m sure you think it’s about you, right? 

It was all about you in the end, anyway. 

I bet you guess that whatever I do, it will be equal parts sinister and lovely. Majestic and hellish, just as you saw me. I’m sure you think I plan to sneak up behind you, whisper everything you ever wanted to hear, every sweet nothing I denied you, before reaching around and snapping your neck. Or maybe you think I’ll show up on your doorstep, dawning a look that begs for sweet forgiveness, spilling out promises we both know I can’t keep, before throwing acid all over the button down I had picked out for you. Or better yet, I bet you jerk off to the idea of me walking right up to you, making the eye contact I never could seem to make before owning up to all of my wrongs, apologizing for my shortcomings before promising to improve myself, right before throwing myself into your upon arms. 

The knife I then slide in between your shoulder blades hardly needs to be mentioned. It’s all too poetic, isn’t it? 

Of course, these routes are hardly my style. What I have in store takes the cake and serves it cold. 

When I see you- but that’s just it, isn’t it? I’m not going to see you. You won’t be getting the time of day or the day of the week or any other arbitrary marker from me if you dare look my way. 

You see, for the first time in a long time, I feel whole. I’ve remembered who my best friend and ally is, and I get to see her every morning when I brush my teeth. 

When I see you- or rather, when you see me, you won’t even stop to stare because you won’t recognize me, because I’m not who you spent the last few years with. I’m completely different, yet I haven’t changed at all. 

And in the brief moment you see me a thought may even flash through your mind, a thought that you wish you could have gotten to know her better, that you wish you had dated her instead. My scent of concentrated self-love piquing your interest, piquing the interest of every guy I pass by from that day forward.

And for the first time, I won’t notice.