You told me that you loved me, once. I hate you for that. I hate you for giving me that responsibility. I hate you for not being scared. I hate you for making me face something inside of me that I would rather have strangled and buried thousands of feet below the surface of the earth. I hate how you could take my troubles from me and make me feel like I was worth the world. Why should anyone have that power over another?

I hate how you stuck up for me when I should have confronted my own problems. I hate how you always believed in me, and how you never doubted anything I said. I hate how the world stopped when I was with you. I hate you for being there for me. For understanding me. For needing me.

I hurt myself because of you, you know. I very nearly screamed when the blade cut my flesh. Straight line. Cross. Straight. Curve. Straight. I dotted the ‘i’ with a quick pierce. The ‘s’ was difficult, and looks rather jagged now. I didn’t even feel the last letters.

Your name, spelled into my arm. Part of you, immortalized in my skin. Because I loved you too, you know.

I hate you for making me do this.

.

George Meredith's sonnet rung in my head whenever I was with you. It was like a turntable, the words circling in my mind like an incessant record. "On a starr'd night Prince Lucifer uprose. Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend."

I refered to you as Lucifer so much in my thoughts that I would do so in speech, and you let me use the appellation. I think that it made you feel special. You were the morning star. You always would be.

It never changed, though. You were the glorious one. The beautiful one. Virtue, walking arm in arm with grace; and I, the poor, lamentable creature on a decadent spiral. You would pick me up, right me, reassure me of my decency, kiss me, love me. I would fight you, fight your gentleness, fight everything you tried to teach me.

You understood me. I know you did, and it terrified me, because nobody had ever done so before. And since my realization of this, every action I took was out of fear. Fear for myself, of myself.

.

I don't know how you put up with me for so long. My austerity, my bitterness, my hopeless, gloom-ridden sentences; I nearly drove myself mad with them. I told myself you would be better off without me. I still believe in my heart that you are. Do I regret pushing you away? Yes. But it is a selfish remorse, and making you leave was the most benevolent thing I've done.

I wanted you for myself, and would have hurt you more deeply than ever had you stayed. I would have stripped you of your kind demeanour, and of your unperturbed faith. It would have been an unfair exhange: love for hate. And all for what?

.

You told me that you loved me, once.