I promise this. I promise that. I promise I will never leave.

Why did I let myself believe you?

After every promise you broke, I continued to forgive you and trust you. You promised to protect my heart from any boy who tried to break it, but all along, you were the one who caused me the most pain.

I proudly walked with your dog tags around my neck and made everyone wish they were me when I talked about you. My family accepted you with open arms and gave you a place to live, not just my immediate family, but also my grandparents, aunts and uncles. They gave you a job, but more importantly they gave you the love of a family. But you, being the person you swore you weren’t, forgot everything when someone new walked into the picture. You forgot every promise you ever made to me, and then acted as if nothing happened.

“She is my priority now, and if you don’t accept that you aren’t my sisters,” you said.

You don’t understand what it felt like to realize that I meant so little to you. You don’t understand the pain I felt when you chose her over me. I literally felt my heart break inside of me.

I have prayed every night for God to help me know how to feel, for Him to help me not hate you for your broken promises.  I have never hated someone, but I struggle to understand how I feel.  I would never stop loving you. I would never disown you as a brother. I would never let any boy come in between us, no matter how serious we were. I would never and have never given up on you. But I now know you don’t feel the same way.

You continually remind her how much you love her, but you didn’t even tell me happy birthday on my sweet 16. You didn’t welcome me home from the airport after I was out of the country for a month. My family and I have put up with your garbage and still continue to welcome you back with open arms when you came back. I always ignored the small nagging feel in the back of my mind that told me to guard my heart from your promises, because I would always tell myself that you loved me too much to do something you promised you wouldn’t, but I guess I was wrong, again. Have you really forgotten everything?

I try to convince myself that you still love me, but even when I want to believe it with every fiber of my being, the only way I will ever believe it again is if you prove it to me, and I fear that you never will.