"Ex-boyfriend," was that what you planned to be all along? Was I entertainment, something pretty for your arms, a way to improve your status among the boys? If that's the case then you were never my boy friend, more of an amateur manipulator, a child in a man's body. Do you know, my "friend" what happens to children who play with fire? They are burnt of course.

So as much as you have scorched my insides, charred what was whole, you have brought an inferno on yourself. It's not that I'm not over you, that part was easy, I did that on day one. My mama told me to "live and let live," "to forgive" and "be the bigger person." The problem with that is I'm not yet mature enough to listen to my mother. Perhaps I will be when my revenge lies cold at your feet, a million glass fragments flashing in wintry light, ready to cut you no matter the direction you take.

But that's just it isn't it? I've been waiting for you to mean nothing, again, just like you used to be. Right before I had become aware of your existence. I don't want to remember how it used to be, when nothing else mattered but you and me, music, country roads, and future dreams. . . Or plans that will now, never get to be.

I want you to quit being the reason I have these awful bags under my eyes, I'm sick of you being the reason I stay up till 4am thinking of the last time we kissed. Thinking of the way your lips lingered with the taste of your tainted lies, how you smelled or her cherry blossom perfume.

I don't want to remember when you said how happy I made you and truly meant it. . . Now, it's just a phrase you say without thinking. I guess I messed up. . . I loved you and thought that maybe you loved me, but how the hell can someone love me while being inside another woman? You didn't deserve me or maybe I didn't deserve you, maybe I wasn't meant to feel the butterflies I felt when your skin touched mine. . .

I was so deeply in love with you, but you never cared to notice. You always cared about other girls, and not the ones that ever mattered. I loved you so much and you took it for granted, you toyed my heart like it was nothing to you. You continued to run to me crying about the girls who never loved you back, and yet I still continued to lit myself on fire to keep you warm. Now, sadly, with the way you treated me, my flame went out.

I'm not going to lie about this - yes there is still days that I miss you, of course I still do, yes I still look for bits of you in every guy I meet, I probably always will; yes I'll still hope that I see your face when there's a knock and I open the door - but I don't want you back. You ruined me. And even though I love you I know your no good for me.

Hating you is awful; it's like a snake eating it's own tail, or worse. It hurts me more than it hurts you and it just keeps going round and round. Everyone says it passes with time, that I'll move on when I find someone new. Beneath the smile I return to them is more than doubt. After you I'm not the same girl anymore, there's a purity, a naivety that died.

I envy those that marry their childhood sweethearts, the ones that never feel the keen sting of betrayal, the anguish of forming a bond so strong only to have it ripped from your still beating heart. It's an invisible wound that never gets treated and the infection only gets worse. I'm still me, but with a caution and a tinge of bitterness I never wanted.

In the end, that's all you really gave me. Perhaps that's why the hate is so intense, you changed who I am for the worse, made me close down at the very age I should be open to new love.