Work Text:
Dear Belly,
I hope you never call me again.
………
I hope you do.
I miss you.
But I hate you too.
I could never….
I just wish I could though.
I wish I could truly hate you for everything.
But I don’t.
What I do have for you is unforgiveness.
Belly, I will never forgive what you did or forget it.
Even though I miss you and I love you, I will never forgive you again.
Remember that summer we almost lost the summer house and you said you wanted me, I didn’t believe you.
I told myself you were not to be trusted, that you were lying.
And I stayed away from you.
I didn’t want to be sucked back into your web and lies again, into your deceit.
I know we cannot help who we love but I wish you had always been honest with yourself because now, you’ve left me to pay for a crime I didn’t commit.
To pay for loving you, for believing you.
You were my best friend but I stayed away from you, you could have let me, you should have but instead, you looked me in the eye and told me you wanted me.
You told me it was real for you.
And I made a mistake.
I made the biggest mistake of my life.
I believed you.
Was it really real for you?
Is anything ever truly real for you?
Our first kiss, the first time we became one, the closest any two people could ever be, the first time you told me you loved me.
Our first breakup?
Was anything of it real?
Was the proposal real?
When you said, “life was too short not to spend it with the person you love,” was it real for you then?
Were you even talking about me in that moment?
When you said you could not imagine your life without me in it, how did that feel on your tongue?
Heavy?
Raw?
Bitter?
Real? Was the weight of that lie on your tongue heavy?
Was it real?
Did your heart skip a beat when you said that.
If I had hooked you to a lie detector that day, what would it have read?
Lies?
Untrustworthy?
Danger?
When we kissed, my heart felt light because the feel of your lips on mine, your fingers in my hair, you standing on your toes, grabbing my shirt, I felt like I could breathe, I felt like I found my home.
Had any of it being real?
How real is it if you are halfway across the world right now and I’m left here to deal with all of this mess by myself?
How is it real if you can call me to chat like old times only to tell me you do not want me in your life anymore?
Was it real if I was never enough?
If you knew you loved Conrad this whole time?
If no matter what I did, I would always fall short?
Was it real if I was doomed to never have you?
When I said you were my family, I meant it because I know I have none of my own.
Conrad, dad, are just people I share a surname with.
But you,
You, Steven and Taylor were my family and now, I do not even have that.
You took that away from me; you and Conrad and that’s not even the worst part.
That is nowhere near the worst part of all of this.
I do not know how to not love you, that’s the worst part.
I want to rip myself in two and pull out my heart,
I want to cry until I am hoarse and my voice is gone.
I want to scrub my brain until there is nothing of you left.
I want to die.
How does that feel?
To know that there is a boy who loved you more than life, whose very breath was your name, who saw his entire world in your eyes.
To know that you could hurt that boy over and over, two summers, 5 autumns between and he still cannot hate you?
How does it feel to be you?
To be this worshipped?
I worshipped you.
And maybe I shouldn’t have.
I still worship you, I can’t help it.
And I still love you.
I still miss you.
I just won’t ever forgive you, never again.
And I know now, that I can live with that.
Jeremiah.