I Don’t Want To, But I Do (Extended Version) (Gay Boy's version) (From The Vault)

Hey there, Stranger. 

*I love you* by Billie Eilish starts playing: 

It started with the way he said my name.

Soft, like a secret.

Like it belonged to him before it ever belonged to me.

I remember thinking: this is it.

The great, tragic kind of love.

The kind that poems warn you about.

The kind that rips you apart and calls it devotion.

The kind that makes you feel chosen… and then cursed.

He always knew how to look at me like I was glowing,

even when my body was trembling in corners I don’t remember walking into.

He always said the right thing,

just two seconds after saying the wrongest thing imaginable.

And me?

I forgave him.

Every time.

Because I saw the ghost behind his eyes.

Because I was foolish enough to think my big & great love could heal him.

There were things I never told anyone.

Not really.

Just gestures.

Just unfinished sentences.

People would ask, “Are you okay?”

And I’d smile too quickly.

Shrug too hard.

Laugh at the wrong moment.

He never raised his voice.

He didn’t have to.

He knew how to make silence loud enough to crush me.

He knew which version of me to starve and which one to feed just enough attention to keep me there.

God, I was so there.

I was there even when I wasn’t.

I left my body so many times just to survive a conversation.

To survive the way he didn’t say sorry.

Or worse—when he did.

I don’t remember the last time I told him I loved him and meant it.

But I said it anyway.

Because when you’ve built a shrine in someone’s shadow,

you forget what sunlight feels like.

He said he was sick.

Not bad.

And I believed him.

Because the alternative meant I gave myself to someone who never deserved it.

And that was too much to bear.

Even now,

with a book full of our wreckage

and hands that still flinch when I hear a certain ringtone,

I think about the way he used to pull me into his chest like I was breakable.

He always held me so gently—

after the storm.

And I still love him.

Not for what he was.

But for what I made him in my head.

That’s the most dangerous kind of love, isn’t it?

The kind you have to imagine to survive.

The kind where you love the idea harder than the person.

I don’t want to love him.

Not now.

Not after everything.

But I do.

And that’s the cruelest part.

Because what am I, if not with him, without him? What does that make me? 

What does that love say about me? That for him, love was both mental and physical. 

For me, love was enduring his love so my own love could heal and get me out before his took over. 

That is love.