I fell in love with you a long time ago. Back in the summer breeze, I laughed as I made a crown of flowers and dropped it on your head, gently as if your head could crack like an egg. You didn't notice, and only when I was trying to snap pictures of your adorableness did you look at me with squinting eyes full of suspicion did you realize that I had crowned you king of flowers. Even as you scowled and glared at me as you took it off and ripped it to pieces I did not stop laughing, a light giggle in the warm breeze.

I wonder, where did it all go wrong? Maybe I should never have confessed, then I would never have been hurt, and you wouldn't have to deal with such a person. Even now, as I stand on Maritime Cliff above Sandstone Beach my mind doesn't stop or slow, my thoughts whirling as fast as they possibly can, trying to find a way to bring it all back together. I wonder, if you were ever as dedicated as I was, then maybe it wouldn't have ended up this way. The times that we argued over stupid things and then important things hurt too much.

I wonder, if all love brings is hate, then what's the point of having it in the first place?

Some people say that love and hate are opposites. How are they opposites if they come together for everything? If every time I reached for your lips with mine, if every time I tried to hug you and praise you for a job well done, I was greeted with nothing but poison and daggers, then what is the point?

Where was your gentle side that I knew from years before?

Where was the you that I fell in love with?

Why did everything break apart as fast as it came together?

So even now, the days that came when we tried our hardest to apologize and forgive, ours hearts were covered and hardened by a darkness called "hurt." It forced us both into defensiveness, to deceive and stab, to lie and burn.

It seems I had succumbed to your poison long ago.

The ties that we had were weak, secured by weak knots called "friendship" and made out of a weak material called "love," so maybe it was inevitable that everything came apart easily in the tornado called "hate."

I guess that nothing really was that easy, huh. They have it all in those romance novels, you know. It's really too simple: meet up, hate each other for a little bit but of course it's just because they really have a mutual love for each other, and then make out a little bit and realize the love, and then a happily ever after.

All I can wonder now is, where is our happily ever after? It sure exists in other stories, where the prince is enraptured by the princess's beauty and then the king says yes because he sees the princess's beauty as well and then they marry in some grand wedding where everyone attends except the jealous sisters but no one cares about the sisters anyway and so they end up inheriting the kingdom and ruling in some really fair manner and I want to know, where are we? In this storyline, where do we exist? You sure were my prince in shining armor, saving me whenever people tried to bully or make fun of me, drying my tears with your gentle fingers and telling me that we were always going to be friends, no matter what. And when I looked into those gentle blue eyes of yours, I always believed you. Tell me, were those all lies, too? Was everything that we went through a lie, something to make fun of me, so that you could tear my life to pieces? Even now, when you tell me things to my face like "I love you" or "Get out of my life" I can never quite believe you. Which one is the real you? The one where you treated me like the jewel you are to me, or the one which you don't really care if I jump off this cliff or not?

I can never tell anymore. There's been too many lies, too many times when you said "I love you" just to turn right around and let me get raped or something like that. Sometimes at night, I cry because I really can't tell whether you care about me, even as a friend or acquaintance because even though we're married, it feels like we're strangers that just met the day before so it's really not your job to care about me. But even so, I can't imagine the idea of getting a divorce and never seeing you. Because even as we hate and hate and hate I can still see glimpses of the kind and gentle child you once were, and those are what allow me to keep holding on and giving me these lies of faith that I thought were impossible to have, yet I can't stop believing that one day, maybe you'll revert back to the friend you were to me instead of this stranger.

Faith and love play cruel tricks, don't they. My mind already knew that clearly, you were gone, slipped through my fingers like a futile attempt to cup water in my hands even as it seeped through the cracks. Cracks that would inevitably end up becoming larger and larger and threatening to destroy everything before they covered everything, swallowing everything good and happy before replacing them with darkness.

Our hearts are filled with these cracks, and each time we lied, we plunged the knife in deeper, deeper, deeper as the cracks grew, grew, grew and before we knew it, they had taken over and swallowed the light and we were plunged into the ground, our fingers reaching for a nonexistent sun and even the moon didn't want to reflect its white light onto us.

I mean, I guess we were just so covered with black that anything that did touch us turned black as well. I wondered, if I were given a chance to redo everything from the start, would I have still ended up here? Love is a fickle thing, something I wish now never existed. It's unpredictable, uncontrollable, and in this torture room called "life" it forced me into positions where everything seemed to be trying to hurt and kill and burn and scrape and cut. I didn't ask to hurt you. I didn't ask to be hurt. But everything that wanted to rip our lives apart happened anyway, and even as I pleaded with the gods above to let us live our lives like any other couple, without the hate that we constantly gave each other, nothing happened. I guess it's too much to ask for help from a deity I've never believed in.

The waves splash against the rocks, a gentle tide against the hardness of the stone. It's kind of like us: my attempts to find your soft side that no longer existed, and your cracks spreading throughout us and the constant pushing me away. And even as the tide recedes, I can still see my crying self wondering where I could find that compassion that you showed me in your youth as I tried to no end to reach that destination that I thought we could have had. Apparently I was wrong, just like every other time.

A light drizzle comes on, the cold droplets soft against my bare skin before they get harder, louder, icier. It's like you. The rain is hiding what it could be, the gentle precipitation it could be by coming on as fast as it possible it, as hard as it can.

I'm long past believing that you are just this way. I know that you just don't care about me, and that the little you I had grown to love has long since died. But even so, why can't I just move on past you? My own rain comes on, tears dripping down my face as I wail about why life had to be this unfair to me.

This scene has become so common, so normal to me that I no longer care if anyone sees me; even though I know that no one's here to judge me at 12 am on a stormy night anyway I kind of want you here just so you can see what you've done to me. Maybe you'll be glad. Glad that you've finally gotten rid of that annoying girl who's been nothing but a burden you've long since stopped caring about. But deep down in my heart, I wish that you'd come next to me, a hand on my shoulder before you wrapped your strong arms around my back and hugged me and kissed me and made me forget about everything bad as I drowned in your warmth.

I know it's not going to happen, though. So all I can do is hug myself with my arms of ice and keep crying about the unfairness of life.

So you might be able to imagine what it felt like when I had finally decided to end everything, once and for all. It was a relief, almost. It's kind of funny. Death was supposed to be something scary, and no one was supposed to yearn for it. But to me, its mysterious nature began to turn into something mystical, like how scientists wish to understand what they do not know. And really, what better way to understand it than to actually go through it? Maybe once it was over, I'd laugh about what a silly process it was, or maybe I would just disappear as quickly as barbeque smoke.

Well, it probably was about time to start. I'd wasted enough time here, wondering if maybe you'd chase after me, like when we were kids, but I know that it's just my imagination running wild, the part of me that can't forget. I wish that my memory wasn't that good, that my heart could forget your kindness that you marked it with so long ago. If I could let go, then maybe this wouldn't have happened. I love you, I hate you so much more, yet I can't find it within me to break this string that fate has tied.

My toes are already over the edge, and next the soles of my feet are inching past rock onto air, and then I can feel the wind blowing as hard as it can, pushing my body past everything and forcing me to crash into the waves.

I suppose after all this, now's not really the time to resist, right?

So I close my eyes as let the world do as it will, and as the frigid wind blew I let it guide me past the edge, into the water below.

Well, at least that's what I expected was going to happen. Instead of the bliss I expected, all I felt was a harsh tug on my arm and you calling out my name and tears. The waves are crashing below my kicking legs like this is normal, except everything about this image is not. People aren't supposed to want to die, and you aren't supposed to care enough to save me.

And yet here we are.

So even though I don't want to keep holding on because I know that all it will do is bring me more pain, pain that I don't want, I can't find it in me to pry your hand away because it's the first time in years that you've actually reached for me and even as I cry harder and let my hand loosen, all you do is grip it harder, a kind of desperation that's never happened before.

It's almost enough to bring back everything from beneath the frozen surface, drag memories through water and past the iced lake's top.

I scream at you to let go, but you let go of me the same way I tried to let go of you for all these years. You keep your hand on mine, telling yourself to try harder, to not let our story end like this. And as your voice grows hoarse from screaming, you pull harder, defying gravity and suddenly I'm back where I started: on my knees, my hands scraped, and you hugging me and kissing me and apologizing so much that here I was, back again, drowning.