Say it and watch me bleed

I don’t remember when we started hurting ourselves more than they ever could, but I know it felt like the only way to stay afloat. Whatever we say, no matter how cruel or quiet, we always find our way back—dragging ourselves through the same bruised loop of friendship, where love sounds like hush-toned insults and apologies come too late to matter.

Some people fall in love. We fell into each other like wounds—unhealed, reopened, and always bleeding just beneath the surface. We said things no one should ever say and meant them just enough to scar. But somehow, we still came back. Like pain was the only language we ever learned to speak right.

Sometimes, I think we hurt each other just to feel something. Like the silence between us is so loud, we need to break it with bruises—verbal, emotional, whatever works. There’s no catharsis. No breakdowns. Just these quiet detonations, and then the routine of pretending again. We sit next to each other like nothing happened, eyes forward, hearts wrecked. And maybe that’s the worst part—we’ve learned how to live inside the wreckage without ever trying to leave it.

I remember the night he told me I was nothing.

Not in anger. Not in a shout.

Just a quiet, offhand whisper in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely—like it was a fact, like the weather.

And I remember nodding. Not crying. Not breaking. I'm just nodding, like I agreed. Like I already knew.

We didn’t talk for three days after that. Then he showed up at my door with a half-eaten bag of chips and said, "Wanna go walk somewhere?"

I said yeah like I wasn’t still carrying those words around like broken glass in my throat.

    He once called me a burden in the middle of a joke. Everyone laughed. I didn't. Neither did he.

    We sat under a bridge once, our knees bleeding from running. He looked at me and said, "Do you ever feel like if you disappeared, no one would even flinch?" I told him yes. He didn’t answer.

    I texted “I hate you” one night. He left it on read. The next morning, he asked if I wanted to skip school and get breakfast.

    We broke each other in places our parents already cracked. That’s why we fit so well.

    He once said I talk too much when I cry. I haven’t cried in front of him since.

    One night, I told him I didn’t want to be here anymore. He said, “Same,” and lit a cigarette. We never talked about it again.

Saying I love you feels loose. Empty. Like something you say just to fill space between the damage.

But when she says it—her voice doesn’t crack, her hands don’t shake—only her eyes betray her.

They're full of sorrow, like she’s mourning the person she used to be before loving me, meant surviving me.

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