Someone once told me that the grass was much greener on the other side, but nobody dared to tell me that the maintenance level was high. Love…how dare you mention that word to me! That word I associate with so much hate, you use it so carelessly, so nonchalantly, so arrogantly. “I love this, I love that. I love her, i love him, I love you.” Love. What does that word even mean to you?  Do you love me like the abusive father and husband tells to his family after he rips their limps piece by piece? Do you love me like the heartless mother who drove her newborn babies into the river? Do you love me like Harpo loved Cecile, like Ike loved Tina, like Bobby loved Whitney, like Judas loved Jesus? Love. I loved…once. Someone once claimed their love to me and still managed to hurt me so bad. I tried to reason, tried to demand an answer. But what did I get? Nothing! Love beat me like I was a slave, until I was black and blue in the face. There I was, the butt, in all your jokes. But here's a message for you. See, My momma taught me how to love and my daddy educated me on how to treat someone to the likes of love. You...were neither. See, love is nice and understanding and forgiving and compromising and there for me, always. But where were you? Here's another. I've learned that there are too many laughs to laugh, cries to cry, friends to make and places to go, but I can't do that if I'm stuck on you. I mean how can I expect you to love me if I barely love myself. So if you do love me, loe me enough to leave me the heck alone because I'm through with you. I still survived. And at the end of the day, you will still be that careless, nonchalant, arrogant beast of the deep that I fell in love with. But me, I survived. And I’m… still… here.