I Would Rather Be In Bed

I wonder if you know how much love it took to hate you this much.

Hate doesn’t come from nothing. It’s not born in a vacuum, not a sudden gust of wind that sweeps through and rearranges everything overnight. No, it’s built—layer by layer, moment by moment, lie by lie. Hate is love that stayed too long past its expiration date, curdling into something unrecognizable, something bitter and sharp-edged.

For the longest time, I asked myself what it would take. What was the final straw? Was it the endless lies, the broken promises, the half-hearted commitments to jobs, plans, and a future that was never real? I used to think, foolishly, that love alone was enough. That one day, you would wake up and realize that all of those distractions, all the things that kept pulling you away, were insignificant compared to having a life with me. That you would see me, truly see me, and that would be enough.

But it never was.

Because the truth is, you never actually wanted a life with me—you just didn’t want to be alone. You wanted someone to fall back on, someone to hold the pieces together while you ran after your next distraction. And I let you. I let you because I believed in something that didn’t exist, because I thought that, if I just held on long enough, you’d wake up one day and be the man I deserved. That maybe, just maybe, love would be enough to make you choose me.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

It took me too long to see that you only ever did the bare minimum to keep me tethered. Just enough affection to keep me hoping. Just enough apologies to keep me waiting. You were never going to wake up and choose me. You only ever chose yourself. And I hated you for that. Not just because of the betrayal, not just because of the broken trust—but because I knew that deep down, I had been complicit. I let you stay. I let myself believe. And I resented myself for that almost as much as I resented you.

But the thing about hate is that it burns hot, and even the strongest flames don’t last forever. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the point of indifference—if I’ll ever truly not care—but I know that I won’t let you live in my head rent-free anymore.

Hate was love’s final form. But I’m done giving you even that.