it was not nothing. but i feel, to some extent, that it would seem like nothing to others. i know for a fact that it meant, and continues to be, nothing, to him. 

and because of that, i had to make it into "something."

i know i didn't conjure the entirety of it in my head. just some of it, so that i could justify why i feel like this. why when i close my eyes, i can hear him shouting at me to get inside the house, that i can feel myself back there, in that moment, like a defenseless animal. helpless and scared. humiliated that i was naive enough to think, perhaps something like childish nostalgia would mean something to this person who i regarded as a friend. i was naive to think he thought the same. 

i was just another girl he could take advantage of. it didn't matter that he had a girlfriend. it didn't matter that we were friends from middle-school, that he was destroying whatever history we had, that he was disrespecting every fiber of my being. i meant nothing to him.

his hand on my thigh, rubbing me. asking and asking and asking. why? why can't i kiss you? do you have a boyfriend? 

because you have a girlfriend, i said even when i didn't mean it. that wasn't why.

it's fine, she won't know, as if that was the problem. it wasn't. you were.

i was stupid enough to pretend to laugh at you, taking a selfie of us together. until now i don't know if you laugh about it with the others. are you doing that behind my back? am i the butt of the joke? the girl you cornered into the house. the defenseless animal. is that me? are they all laughing? 

are you?

i don't know. just like i didn't know you then, i don't know you now. but i know that it meant nothing to you, that you could come up to me a year later and shamelessly tell me you didn't have my number. and the fool i was, the fool i still am, gave you my number as if i didn't block you the very night you touched me in ways i wish you didn't.

it angers me that i feel this way until now, when you can prance around with your girlfriend guilt-free. probably the same girlfriend you said won't know.

the night nothing happened was a just another miss for you. but it was the night that shifted my entire life. i sit here thinking, day in and day out, if i am unlovable because of you. am i broken? 

nothing happened. nothing happened. nothing happened.

no, it was not nothing.

if it were nothing then how could i feel this wretched and unstable and lost and fragile, even 4 years after you put your hands on me?

it was something. it was.

this something is the reason the pathetic me can only say these words on a keyboard, and not spit them at you in person.