Show me what it is to hurt

2001

This was an assignment for my creative writing class during my senior year in high school.

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My life revolved around only you
I lived and breathed for the thought of you
My hopes and dreams were all for you

I wanted it so very bad

I am so sorry that I hurt you
With my deepest regrets I cry for you
I shamefully see what I've done to you

I never meant to make you sad

Make me cry
Break my heart
Make my entire existence fall apart

Show me what it is to hurt
Punish me in my vain 

Cut me hurt me make me bleed 
Deprive me of my every need 
Punish me for every bad deed

Make me feel your pain 

I deserve to pay for all my sins
For the bad that still lies deep within
Make blood flow from my pierced skin

There must be a way

For all the times I've made you cry
For all the times you've wanted to die
For that awful time that I said goodbye

I will make myself pay. 

The backstory to this dark and melodramatic piece of angsty teenage writing is that I broke up with this guy for another guy (who, I had actually met in the creative writing class for which I wrote this poem). When I ended things, he told me, bitterly, “I hope you end up marrying this dude.” It was the second time I’d broken up with that same boyfriend for someone else (the first time being for a guy from North Carolina who I met at church camp the year prior). He thought that if I could do that to him twice, it must have meant there was something super special about that second guy.

Nope.

There wasn’t.

If I recall correctly, the number one thing that made me want to break up with him for Creative Writing Class Guy was that Creative Writing Class Guy was really, truly, exceptionally hot af, and I was a teenager and that was all I (or anyone, let’s be real) really cared about.

I did not end up marrying Creative Writing Class Guy.

Creative Writing Class Guy turned out to be kinda nuts and ended up marrying someone else almost immediately after we broke up 6 months later, though, a mere couple months after graduating high school. I have no idea what he’s up to now; the last time I saw him was a couple years after we broke up. I had walked into my house on the night of Halloween after work, rushing to throw a costume¹ together for a party, and saw him there sitting on the couch with my mom, chain-smoking and complaining about how he hated his wife and family life.

The guy I broke up with for him, meanwhile, would still sneak to my house when he knew I wasn’t home to bring my mom flowers or homemade eggrolls for Mother’s Day or her birthday or random other occasions.

He has since relocated to the Deep South where he owns a chain of businesses and even ran for office as a third party candidate a few years back. I still talk to his sister, my friend before I dated him, and it’s confirmed: he still hates me. I guess I sounded a little perplexed when I described his cold response to my “hello” in the line for the bar at her wedding a few years back because her response was, “well, you did break his heart!”

True enough. At least it looks like I felt really bad about it.

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1. That year, instead of the slutty vampire costume from a couple years before, I wrapped paper grocery bags around my arms and legs and plucked branches off the Best Buy parking lot shrubbery where I worked and stuck them in my hair. I was a tree. Funnily, even though we had broken up a couple years ago at that point, I was going to that party with the same guy from the slutty vampire story, hosted at the same house. He didn’t still hate me… although I guess I didn’t cheat on him and break up with him for different dudes twice over the course of a year.