Love Letters

CW: This piece contains mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation.

All of my love letters are read as suicide notes. I guess this makes sense because every time I’ve loved someone it– you–they made me feel like I was dying. When I told you that I needed to stop crying about how you didn’t love me back, I didn’t mean it as an accusation or a threat. Did you miss the part where I told you that I smile every time I get to see you, even if it was just a passing glance? Or did you just know that I wouldn’t be seeing you anymore– wouldn’t be smiling anymore so you didn’t want to bring it up. I didn’t even have to tell you that every time you walk past me without saying hi it makes me want to walk into an open pit of fire and burn off the parts of me that didn’t warrant a greeting. Leaving out the part where I almost drove my car off the road because you didn’t show up in the place we usually see each other was intentional. The list I have of the words I associate with you was scattered among the letters but I never explicitly said they were our words, even though I hoped you would notice. I didn’t tell you that you made me want to die because you didn’t, you couldn’t. Other people are not the perpetrators of my suffering even if they are the cause. But still, amongst all the mentions of how happy you made me, you singled out the one time I said that you made me cry. Maybe you suspected it was more than crying, that maybe loving someone was the equivalent to wishing you were dead if you were without them. You weren’t wrong. Because loving someone for me has always ended with me upside down on a tightrope barely clinging on, even though it was me who wanted to walk the line to begin with. It has torn me apart not just because I am broken but because they are all too. All my love turns to obsession and obsession turns to danger and danger turns to fear. You were the one that hurt me this time, and believe me you hurt, but the pattern is what scares me. The pattern of my turbulent loss, of adding another person to the list of people I have to avoid in hallways, another series of nights screaming on the floor with bloody palms. All my love letters are read as suicide notes, and I am beginning to fear that this is what love is for me. That the closest I’ll ever get to love is wanting to die because of it. And I know love is supposed to make you want to live, that love letters shouldn’t be so painfully misread, but I cannot bring myself to believe that what I feel isn’t love because I would live a thousand lives if it meant I got to live them with you. But I didn’t even get one.