Et tu, Brute?

I search for you in the places you stopped existing
Search for myself in all the things you left me
For a sign that this was real
There is nothing about you that I do not miss
I love you, I love you
Even now that I hate you
There is nothing about this that does not kill me
The notebooks falling apart,
The crumpled up birthday letters
The half-erased memories

I am constantly reinventing myself,
Trying to become a me that you don’t know
I have been so many people, and none of them ever forgot
All the names you have,
All the faces you wear
There are so many different versions of you in my head
And I don’t want to find out which one is the truth

Because it might turn you into something holier
Something less acidic
Something that doesn’t wear at me or rot me from the inside
I am rotting

I don't want to be this person anymore
The person who let you let me go
Who needed you more than you needed me
All the nights spent trying to scrub your hands clean of my blood
Will never make of me a forgiving person
I’ve been trying to write you into stanzas for years
Hoping I can finally lay you to rest
But your ghost never stops following me around
I am not made from forgiveness
I have no more left to hand out
And I cannot give to you that which you never asked for
Not even to say that you missed me, too

You have buried me in every secret I ever told you
Every year you add more things for me to regret
While I fester away,
Decompose in all your hatred
I am rotten
And you made me this way

You and all your self-righteousness
All your made up betrayals that you pretended to forget
Did you forget how you swore the sky was gonna swallow you?
How I was the one who raised you from the dead and made you feel like you had something worth fighting for?
Remember the swing sets
How we opened each other up every night just to make sure that we were still breathing
That what we felt wasn't gonna kill us
Remember the night I thought my heart was gonna kill me
How you weren't there,
And maybe that should have been a sign
Remember how you watched me kiss her and you cried on the drive home
Remember running in high heels
How I turned on everyone I ever knew just to make sure you stayed loving me

You made of me a broken thing,
A wounded animal
And I never once thought of you as something to regret
Until you taught me how to
I am still running from my past
I am still trying to escape the girl I was when I loved you