I wish I hated you

You were the only person who made me feel seen as a young, confused teen. I looked to those who validated me, as very few did. So was that what led me to hold you at such a high regard? You are who you are, no apologies for being yourself, and I was a lost teenager wearing bras filled with condom water balloons, but you looked at me much the same as you looked at anyone. You were always honest, rarely said anything nice, but you’d talk to me, listen to me most nights. Can’t imagine the crazy things I must’ve said walking the moonlight streets of Woodstock with you, but you’d listen anyway. Do you remember the first day we met? You pissed off my aunt with your typical unhinged mouth. You were one of the only people to stand against the law of my family. You brought us to the river, and I pulled my first drag off a cigarette— the same cigarette your lips touched had now been on mine. I always blamed my mother for my addiction to nicotine, but I attribute my love for it to you. I was much like a puppy dog then, a golden retriever licking up the floor you walked on, hoping to just taste the scraps you’d left behind. Maybe the damaged boy in you just wanted the same validation I was craving for. Who knew it would lead to so many nights with us listening to the screaming, the yelling, and the fighting, but whenever it was all said and done, you’d sit with me. You’d introduce me to what would become my favorite video games to date. Still struggling with the idea of letting you go, those words you uttered into my ear truly would never leave my mind, even nine years later, something like…”You know, Jailbait? When you turn eighteen, I’m gonna marry you.” A stupid, silly joke and an even more ridiculous nickname, but if you’d call me it today, I guarantee I’d become that teenager begging for love all over again. How is it that I could grow so much love for you after everything we’ve been through? How is it that I think in someway I could help you? I could fix the broken cycle and heal the damaged, unloved child inside you. I only flirted with your best friend to get him to fuck me just because I wanted to make you jealous. I was nothing of what I wanted to be. Then I look back at my little self and see a clueless, inexperienced liar trying to seem cool. My memory only recollects your cock being in my mouth for mere minutes, barely three as you joked that you’d never get release from a pair of lips, but could it have been your sleeping baby mama in the other room that made you hesitant? So I’d lie to the cops to protect you and keep this one for myself, yet you exposed us on your own, telling my mother you filmed it. I couldn’t escape you even being locked away from you. Our lives still collided. I found your words written in the request book at the group home we’d both spent time in…”black nail polish and a Bible.” You still could say the right things or maybe just the things I wanted to hear. I thought I’d never see you again, but truthfully, I wrote you letters I’d never send, sent you messages I’d hope would go unread. I look into your children’s eyes and love them more than I’ve ever been able to love anyone or anything in my being and that part of you in them. A piece of you I hate and yet love, a part of you that I will never let go, so maybe that’s why it’s so hard for her to let go. Because you were always hers and never mine, I didn’t even get a piece of you. Everything you were to me was just a fantasy, a partially lived-out fantasy. I can’t kid myself and say it was only that it was also a friendship. I wonder how someone could live a life making so many terrible, life-altering choices and yet in my mind still be seen as just a boy I had a crush on. I make bad choices, so who was I to look at you as any less than me? As my mother would always say, “You see the best in the worst people.” So where does this leave us anyway?