not ready (with me)

there is a woman i used to like—because i am entirely in love with her now, and i wouldn't feel this heavy if i wasn't. let's call her blue. it's her favorite color. we were really good friends at first. we’d talk for hours, and i just deeply admired the way she thought and how she acknowledged me. i have a knack for words of affirmation; they say we give what we desperately need, anyway. for so many nights, we stayed up talking over the phone until the line went quiet, blue falling asleep mid-sentence because she felt safe enough to drift off with me. i fell for her so deeply that i eventually painted my house blue. i wanted her everywhere, just so i’d never commit the sin of forgetting her, even for a split second. i confessed a little later. blue told me she needed to focus on her studies first. she said she couldn't risk disappointing her mother, who wasn't an ally, and that she just wasn't looking for a relationship at that point in her life. but i couldn't just stay friends, even though i knew blue wanted to. i wanted everything with her, or nothing at all. so, i deliberately cut her off. months later, blue accidentally sent me a message. she apologized, saying she didn't mean to text, but expressed surprise that i even replied since i had soft-blocked her on every single platform. her message made me break. i couldn't help but check her accounts, only to find that blue was already with someone else—and completely, fearlessly open about it. she tags her girlfriend everywhere, posts pictures of them, and even goes as far as kissing her on video for the whole world to see. i was shattered by what i saw, and i still am. but what stings the most is the realization that i actually believed blue when she said she wasn't ready for a relationship. turns out, she just wasn't ready to be in a relationship with me. i could have given her the world if she had just given me the chance. it hurts every single day to be online and watch someone else live out a random, quiet tuesday with the love of my life, knowing it should have been me. i hate dealing with this ache, but i can't bring myself to walk away again because it nearly killed me the first time. so i stay, trapped in the torture of hoping she might one day see me, even while forcing myself to watch how her eyes glimmer when she looks at her new lover.