They said love hurts, but I didn’t think it would feel like this. A beautiful kind of hurt. That’s what I pictured. How you get jealous when you’re not who he’s with, the realization that you can’t look at the stars or a lake without thinking of him, the way you get sick of him but long to spend every hour engulfed in the feeling of his presence. I felt all of those things, don’t get me wrong.

It consumed me.

But what became overpowering was the kind of hurt that I would find myself classifying as anything but beautiful. I hurt everywhere. Why were you there with her, when you knew that the thought of you two together killed me? Why did you first tell me you loved me when we were a mangled mass beneath the sheets, when you were trying to have sex for the first time? When I was lost and confused and reaching out to you at 2 A.M., why didn’t you comfort me? When I had asked you to act like you cared more, how could you tell me that I was overreacting? Why had I never heard the words “I’m sorry” slip from your lips?

Did love hurt, or did I?