Another fictional story to share when I'm old

... he wasn't anything I was looking for. At first I didn't even notice him. He had asked family and friends about me many times over a span of three years, but my eyes had never so much as glanced in his direction. It's quite funny when you think about it. The one person who has altered my entire existence in a relatively short amount of time is the same person that I once effortlessly ignored.

It started off too good to be true, but I never once felt that type of fear you experience when you see or hear about something that is in fact "too good to be true." Instead I quickly found myself falling, the way you do for a really bad infomercial in the middle of the night. Only this time the only product I was falling for were his lies. At once I disregarded everything I had learned in life, including everything I knew about myself.

The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months and I find myself, here, nearly a year later and I can't quite explain to myself or others what happened. Funny thing is, the story is quite simple ... boy lies to girl, girl breaks up with boy. Except, this simple story is not so simple. I have so many of his secrets bottled up inside me that it pains me knowing them. Secrets that most girls who were mistreated would be screaming and sharing with the world, yet, here I am taking them on as if they were my own shameful acts of past discretion.

What bothers me most is that my innocence was robbed by him. My standards were lowered to accommodate the love that was growing for him at exponential speeds. It bothers me that I am at a point in my life that I find myself looking at myself and knowing I'll never be the same person I once was. It bothers me that no one will ever quite grasp what it is that makes me want to forgive every one of his terrible actions against me with a simple, "I'm sorry, I need you." What bothers me is that I, myself cant quite grasp what almost makes me tolerate the thought of forgiving him. It bothers me that I lost track of time and don't know how I became the girl that I would always file under "needs rescuing."

We've all been here in some shape, size or form. We've all lived to remember it and sense it when it's near again. We've all lived past it in some shape, size or form. The only variation among broken hearts is the amount of time we allot to the matter. I refuse to accommodate him any longer than I have.

Now despite all that I've been through in the last year, I still opt to believe in love. I don't mind that people both bias and unbiased, both friends and strangers have told me that I can do better. Nor does it bother me that he was the first man in my life that I loved more than he loved me. None of that bothers me. Quite frankly, I would've thought it would, but it inexplicably does not.

My options are endless, each and every one of them better than him, but my wants are so different since him, so absolutely different that I forget what he has done to me (and continues to do to me). It's such a damn shame that he was an okay lover and an expert liar.