The Crowd Will Always Love You
The world has forgotten about us. You let them. At the beginning of the end, they drew attention to it. They asked you what happened between us. You told them it didn’t work out. You told them I was a bitch. You explained to them how right you were in your decision to leave me. They listened to you. When you got angry, they understood. They told you it was okay, that you had a right to be. When you cried, they applauded, and the other girls fell in love with your sensitivity. They consoled you, and you let them. You told them you were alright and you would find someone better. They agreed. Your friends fell at your feet while we were dating. They were jealous of your charm and charisma. They made endless jokes about me and called me a slut. You let them. Then you all had a good chuckle at the idea of you ditching a date to hang out with them instead. Your dad agreed. He was proud of you for getting a girlfriend, even though he knew in his heart of hearts that she wasn’t good enough for you. Still, he told us that the likelihood of us getting married was high. It wasn’t. When we broke up, your dad said he knew it was heading that way. He told you that you would find someone better. You agreed. When you told your friends, they laughed. You told them the breakup didn’t really matter to you. You lied. You didn’t tell anyone that I was the one that broke up with you. You didn’t tell anyone that you refused to talk to me at the end. You said you were busy, you were at the gym, you didn’t have your phone with you. You didn’t tell anyone that we both knew they were lies. No one ever asked me about the breakup. I didn’t get to tell anyone how you cried on the day we fought. I never told anyone that you didn’t want to break up, but you just didn’t think you loved me anymore. I didn’t tell you that I didn’t know what to say to that. No one asked me about the time you said purposely flirting with someone else was cheating and you could never forgive someone if they did that to you. No one asked me about the time you flirted with another girl right in front of me. I never got to tell anyone about the ways you manipulated me into thinking I was the one who cared more. I still don’t know which one of us it was. And even if they would have asked me what happened between us, if they would have asked me, “What’s your side of the story?” I probably would’ve said, “It didn’t work out.” And they would have apologized for the sake of apologizing and moved on. They didn’t really care to know the answer, I knew that. That’s why I wouldn’t have told them the whole story. I wouldn’t have told them about how it felt when we hugged for the last time. I wouldn’t have told them how you broke every promise you ever made. I never broke my promises. I wouldn’t have given them a list of all the ways you damaged my heart and my mental health. They wouldn’t have believed me anyhow. It’s your word against mine, it always has been. Because what do I know? I was just the girl that got her heart broken. She can’t be trusted to say something rational. When I get angry, they tell me to calm down. It’s not life and death, of course. When I cry, they call me emotional, dramatic, crazy. “Why hasn’t she moved on?” they murmur to each other, not bothering to listen for the answer. It’s interesting when girls turn on girls. But I’ll never tell her that he’ll do the same thing to her that he did to me. She wouldn’t listen. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t have either. The crowd will always loves you, after all. Who am I to try to compete with that?
Jocelyn Whitby is a freshman at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, pursuing an English degree. While she loves to write, she never stops reading, and has a fondness for learning new things!
The Albion Review 