Sorry for clogging your reading lists for 30 days.

Day 11: The person who has caused you the most pain.

Dear person who has caused me the most pain,

I'm sorry, but it's you.

It was a night in November. I guess I never should have seen those pictures, but let's be honest, I would have found out eventually. I was so hurt. Thinking about it now still makes my stomach drop a little. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe you have a totally different view of it, but here's why I feel the way I do.

I know things were the worst they were during that time right after you moved in, and I know they only got worse before prom, and I'm pretty sure something was going on around then too, but I guess I'll never really know. Things got better before you left. You knew I wasn't just a friend. You knew things were WAY more deep than casual. I would never have done what I did or felt how I felt without thinking we were something. I wrote you letters. Lots of them. You wrote some to me. What was I supposed to think we were? I know we never explicitly talked about it, and that was probably a mistake.

You came to see me when you got back. Twice. I was on cloud nine. Floating. Completely. It was all I cared about. You were all I could see. You slept on my floor. We kissed. You told me you were going to that game the next day. When I found out it was the next day, everything felt fake. When everything changed in November, it all felt fake.

I went spiraling out of control. Some of that was my fault, or not "fault" really, but some of it was just a bad place I'd worked myself into. I cried constantly. I looked like a psycho crying in the stairwell of Forest. That will always be a bad place for me. I lost a ton of weight. I cried myself to sleep. I cried to my mom so much that she gave me tylenol PM and some cold medicine or something just to get me to sleep. It was all I talked about. To Erin especially. Still sorry Erin, btw. Looking back, my life basically revolved around it. But still, I saw you.

When I refer to the hardest time in my life, I usually just call it "that one Christmas" or "the Christmas of Freshman Year". I was not myself then, and it took me a long, long time to be ok again. I don't even really know how it happened. Just that it did. Slowly, surely, I rose from those ashes, and I'm glad I did. I came out a stronger person. A more mature person. In some ways, I think that made me the college person I am today. More ready to take things on, more capable of dealing with things without letting it overtake me, stronger. I needed that. But it's still a bruise.

For the record, it's still with me. It haunts me. Not even just with you, but with other people. It's hard for me to trust. And, you know. With you. It's definitely the reason I don't know if I'm ready to trust you completely again. But in some ways, it was what I needed to grow up and become the person I needed to be. Is that anti-feminist, or something?

I don't know if you'd call it cheating, but it was what it was.

Love,
Lauren.