What happens when you are hurting so badly you just want to forget?

The most obvious option would be just forgetting, or ignoring the memories. Tying up everything in a bundle, the good and the bad, all my ties to you, and just burning it. And forgetting. And then maybe, the hurt would stop...

But I don't want to forget. I just want to open my hands and let the hurt go, but still treasure the memories... it was good, while it lasted, even if now I'm looking back and seeing all sorts of things I'd missed and I really should've seen, and those hurt, too.

It's been a little less than three years since I first met you. I don't know why, out of all the people on IRC that evening, I decided to talk to you... and I don't know why, the following three years, I was so convinced you were my friend. You listened to me cry, and that was enough for me. You were there. So I ignored all the little warning signs... the way you would ask me to do something for you and sit and ignore all my other attempts at conversation until I did what you wanted me to, the way you always had an excuse to not do anything for me, how you always had to go or you were suddenly busy when I was the most upset... how you treated your girlfriend when you dumped her, the same thing you are now doing to me... and everything my other friends told me about you. I would defend you, and say you were not really like they said; they didn't know you.

Turns out I didn't know you, either... and that you didn't know me, or didn't want to. It seems that nothing I said, and nothing I did, nothing of the three years we spent being friends was enough to make you know me, and trust me, and really consider me a friend.

You called me your best friend. You said you'd always be there for me. You said you cared. How much of that was a lie? How much of that was just convenient to say, so I'd keep doing things for you?

And did you really expect that, after months of you ignoring and avoiding me completely, I would greet you with a smile? Did you really expect none of the hurt you've deliberately let me take up the burden of would spill out? Did you think you could come back, and use me again? Did you think I had not, finally, seen through you?

What you were, or what I thought you were, is the past.

What I am, and what I can be, is my future. Without you.

You can say all you want about me. I can be, in your eyes, mean, a crybaby, rude, an idiot, a little girl who doesn't know how to behave. You can say that. It doesn't make it true, and it says nothing about me, and more about you than you will ever know.

I am here for myself. So are many others. You aren't... and while I regret that, and wish things had been different, it's time to let go.

I hope the people in your future are smarter than I was. I hope it doesn't take them as long as it took me to see through you.

Maybe, someday, we will meet again. In the meantime, I can only close my eyes. And remember.

And let it go.