I made a list of reasons to hate you. I needed something objective. Something measurable. A spine I could rebuild myself around. So I wrote them down. Every word you sharpened before handing it to me. Every silence that starved me just enough to keep me begging. Every version of me you rejected until only the acceptable one remained. It was all there. Documented. Structured. Undeniable. Anyone reading it would have left.
That’s the part that won’t sit still in my head. Because I read it too. Line by line. Slowly. Carefully. Like an autopsy report written about someone who still insists they’re alive.
I kept waiting for the feeling to change. For something inside me to recoil— to rot into anger, to finally spit you out like the poison you were. But nothing moved. Nothing fought back.
That’s when I noticed it. Not in you. In me.
There was a delay. A fraction of a second between what I knew and what I felt. Like something inside my chest was reading my thoughts before allowing me to feel them. Approving. Editing. Filtering.
I tested it. I whispered it out loud: “I hate you.”
Something tightened. Not my throat— something deeper. A hand I don’t remember growing closed gently around my lungs and squeezed just enough to correct me.
The word wouldn’t come out right. It broke in my mouth. Softened. Bent itself into something harmless. “I lo—”
I stopped.
That’s when I understood. It wasn’t that I couldn’t hate you. It was that something inside me wouldn’t let me.
You had given me every reason. Every door was open. I stood there. Watching myself not walk through.
And still— something stayed. Not me. Something that learned which version of me kept you from leaving. And began protecting it. Defending it from me.
I can feel it sometimes. When I get too close to seeing you clearly. It shifts. Subtle. Like organs moving aside to make room for something else to breathe.
It doesn’t speak. It edits. Anger goes in— something quieter comes out. Something obedient. Something that still reaches for you even after understanding what you are.
I think that’s when I lost myself. Not when you hurt me. Not when you left. But when my mind presented the truth— and something inside me smiled… and turned it into love anyway.
Now I don’t trust the feeling. Not the warmth. Not the longing. Not even the ache. Because I don’t know whose nervous system I’m using anymore.
All I know is— if I ever do manage to hate you… it will mean that thing inside me finally starved to death.
Its roots are wrapped around my spine. I’m not sure which one of us goes first.