July

"You remind me every day

I'm not enough but I still stay."

Lyrics from Noah Cyrus's song, July. It's funny how the song title is our birth month, July, how funny that every word in that song exactly paints our story, and how funny a random song can crack open the wound you have tried to sew all this time. It hurts me the first time I accidentally heard it on Instagram in 2019, three years after everything ended, and it still hurts me now.

They said love is joyful, but they also said love hurts. No, love does not hurt, love destroys, every single shell in a person's body and left behind an empty mould that is needed and wanted to be filled so that one can ever feel alive again.

Why didn't you leave when everything fell apart? Why didn't you leave when the fire ended and there were no butterflies in your stomach when you saw me? What did you want from me? I have asked those questions over and over, I have questioned myself why I wasn't enough for you, and us? I believed I have done a lot of things wrong but loving you wasn't one. But you don’t share the same thought, I know.

It was my fault, I know. It was my fault that I was too weak to walk away from you, from the broken relationship we share. It was my fault that I was too blind and painful to accept the truth that everything was over. It was my fault that I was afraid of change. It was my fault to believe you were enough and I wasn’t, that you were right and I wasn’t, that you were the one and I had to give it all to keep you.

How long did it take for me to realize that I was enough, that I was right, and have the rights to love, to be loved, and to be me? This song reminds me of us, of our story, but it also reminds me of how foolish I was, loving an unworthy man and losing myself in the process.