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—”
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.