I left a piece of my heart at the scene that day. Sirens wailing, the bright lights flashing, my wrists penetrated by the handcuffs that now define the moment that everything was stripped away. I was left bleeding, my heart left in shattered pieces on the ground. I was numb, and all I could think about was what would happen next. He was gone, riding in the back of an ambulance somewhere, and I never even got to say goodbye. Those last moments made everything before seem like nothing, and I hated him for that. Hated that he took away any sanity I had left, and replaced it with a gaping wound and a pair of handcuffs. The officer was telling me that I was going to go to juvi, that this would be on my record for a long time. I thought I was telling the truth, but I wasn't. I was saving him, saving him from the haunting reality that what we had shared wasn't good enough, that all of the “I love you's” didn't matter anymore. I was saving him from himself. My breaths are shorter now, and the weight on my chest is heavy and breaking. But I stop crying. As I sit in the back of the cop car, I tell myself that I have to be strong. I see on the police monitor that he is going to the hospital. I'm scared, what have we done?

I tell myself over and over that I did the right thing, that I didn't tell because he doesn't deserve all the trouble. But once home, my barrier breaks and I tell my mom. I crumple to the floor; broken. I hear the voice of my aunt on the phone, telling me to stop being so weak. I am barely breathing as I walk out the door and into the newspaper classroom. I am not strong enough to talk to her, she's already talking to him. She was my best friend, but she's talking to him. I cannot trust her, so instead I talk to my teacher. She is my saving grace. As the world is falling down around me and I can't find anything to hold onto, she offers me her hand and helps to pull me out of the fog. I am surrounded by her love, and for the first time since the incident, I feel strong. I go to the police station with my mom and tell them the dark truth. I have to relive those moments where we were not ourselves, where time and space seemed to disappear. I had to feel trapped again, the horror and fear that provoked me in the first place. My heart starting beating faster now, and I can feel his body crushing mine. I tell the officer everything I remember, and he believes me. I can see it in his eyes, and the way he looks at me. Maybe this can all be undone. So I walk out.

When I get home, my Facebook and email accounts have been hacked. He's not gone yet, and that scares me. Days turn to weeks, and all I feel is raw. Everything has been stripped away for the world to see, things that I didn't even know existed under the surface. More than anything, I believe that everything was a lie, that none of those six months mattered. I thought I wasn't allowed to miss it, miss him, because of the last moments that changed everything. I saw him at the homecoming game, and he was dirty texting my best friend, and everything came crashing down again. Everything inside me was on fire and all I wanted was for him to ignite. I lost him, but when he took her with him, that was more than I could bear. She just stood there and watched me fall apart. So I left. Sure, we were still friends later on, but I would never be able to trust her. I may have had her for longer, but I lost her a long time ago when she picked him.

It seemed that when the rest of the world hated him, I missed him. So I went and saw him. My heart was aching for the goodbye that he took away from me. The moment I saw him, everything else faded away. We talked, and it was so good. But then I saw how ok he was, how he was almost rubbing in how ok he was, and I couldn't take it. I was broken and he was fixed. Loneliness overwhelmed my body, and no one seemed to understand how broken I truly was. So I began cutting. I wanted to take the pain I felt, the loneliness that overwhelmed me, and bring it to the surface so people could see it. I needed tangible proof that I was not ok. It felt like I wasn't good enough. I began counseling, and eventually the cutting stopped.

My life started to come back together again, and I was finally beginning to feel whole again. But I wasn't. What I've found is that I may have put the pieces together again from that night, but one piece will always be missing. His. What we had, it matters. I spent so long hating him, and wishing none of it had happened. I wasted so much energy hating something that at one time, was beautiful. Flawed, but beautiful.

I've figured out that just because we had an explosive ending doesn't mean that the beginning was erased. I gave him all of my heart, and regardless of how it ended, when he put his arms around me, I was home. Even if it was wrong, being with him felt so right. In his arms, I was safe, and loved, and beautiful. And for that brief glimpse of time, I was happy. I've learned so much about what it means to be in a relationship because of him, so I can't hate him. I can't hate someone who I once loved with everything I had. He isn't “the one,” as they say, but he was something. He got me closer to the someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. We shared incredible times, and I don't regret them. I don't regret him. What happened, it was a tragedy. A love story gone wrong. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a love story. Because it was, and will always be, the story of a boy and girl who fell hopelessly in love.

I didn't get to say goodbye, like most do at the end of a relationship. I had to hate him, and I was mad at him for taking that away from me. I wanted to be able to miss him and not feel guilty about it. But now I see that this is what had to happen for us to see the truth about our relationship- that it had become toxic. It had run its course, but the only way we could see it is if this happened. And it did.

I left a piece of my heart at the crime scene, and it was collected as evidence. Evidence of the love that was so real, and that tore us apart.

I left a piece of my heart at the crime scene, and it will always be his.