You Were My Silver Lining but Now I’m Gold.

He paced the floor around the bed. I folded clothes because I needed to keep moving. He kept grabbing at words but hadn’t found enough to string into anything that made sense yet. So I started.
“What could you have to say to me right now? What is there to say. Because sorry doesn’t mean anything. I spend all my time with you. I was there for you every second you needed me. I forgot who I was to help you find yourself. I dealt with all your shit with a smile. I cried more than I ever had in my life because of your actions. Your selfishness. You fuck up, you say you’re sorry, I think it’s going to change and it never does. So what could you have to say to me? Tell me something that I don’t know.”
He kept pacing. And I sat down. He’s started punching the closet doors and then I saw that he was crying. The most emotionless person I will ever know was crying. This is when I got scared. Because I knew that this ran deeper than one drunken night. He finally starts to tell me what’s wrong
But this is the part of the story where the details won’t be word for word. Because those are mine. No one else will ever know what it was like to look at that crying mess of a man but me. He told me that he had been hooking up with M.E.S.S. for a while. Behind my back. That while I was losing my mind trying to figure out why he wasn’t speaking to me for two months he was feeling guilty. That they talked every night on the phone, went to parties together, and talked about dating each other. She apparently didn’t want me to ever know because she had a lot to lose. And he didn’t know how to tell me because he knew how upset I’d be. He said he was sorry. He said it a thousand times. I cried. He cried. And I couldn’t grasp any of what he was saying. He said he was selfish and so was she. We talked for a while about it. I said I wanted to know everything. Maybe he told me everything but there’s no way of really knowing. He grabbed me and he held me and he said he was leaving now. It was morning. None of us got any sleep. He drove away. M.E.S.S knew what was going on in the room. She knew he had told me. She threatened to kill herself and I dared her to do it. I started cleaning because I didn’t know what else to do. Because if I stopped I was going to explode. I went out back to clean the grill and when I came back inside stepped on something wet. I looked down to see that I had stepped on a condom. Just my luck right? I left the house with a few girls to get breakfast and try to sort out what had happened that night. While I was gone M.E.S.S. left without a car, she just started walking hoping eventually someone would answer her calls and pick her up. I didn’t speak to her again for months. I wouldn’t answer when she called or reply to her emails. At first she tried to apologize a lot. But then she got frustrated with my silence and got angry. Said she didn’t do anything wrong. That I was so holier than thou. Maybe she was in a sense right. He was never really mine. But he belonged to me more than her. I never use to think than anyone was jealous of me. Until I realized that she had always been. I was everything she’d never be. I couldn’t be happier about that.
My parents were still out of town for a few days. So I was alone. I guess I wasn’t completely alone. I had my thoughts. I had a millions thoughts. I had plenty of people who wanted to keep me company but I didn’t want it. I just wanted to wallow. I wanted to be selfish and dramatic. For twenty years everyone I met in life looked at me like I was a porcelain doll. Like I was this fragile sweet childhood relic. All I ever wanted from anybody was company and truths. No one has ever been able to be as honest with me as I with them. They would always say they didn’t want to hurt me. That the truth would upset me. But look at what the lies made me. I was always the best friend. The girl that everybody liked. I’d take in every person with a wounded bird demeanor and dote and nurture until they were strong enough to think they didn’t need or want me anymore. I tried to be everything to everyone. And I didn’t end up with anything in the end. You can’t change people. So I stopped trying. I decided it was time to change myself. To love myself. To live for myself. And that nobody was going to make me feel like that again.