we fight, fight, fight. i say we fight but what i mean is that i get mad at the ways you slight me and you try to convince me you didn’t, and around in circles we go, me with my unmovable truths and you with your nonchalance. and we fight.
we talk the phone in the middle of the night and i pace around my tiny apartment, tile cold on my feet, while we try to untangle whatever mess we’re in at the moment, something that’s been going on all day. we hit 1, 2, 3 am, and sometimes i just get so tired that i have to give up and i pretend that i’ve forgiven you.
but mostly, we run in logic circles. you don’t care and this is why, i assert, and you retort with why it was reasonable, and i try to decide if i am crazy, if i expect too much, if i am too sensitive. i wish so hard more than anything that i could be as detached as you, i wish so hard that i just did not care. and then i wish that i did not have to wish these things.
so it’s one of these times and we’ve hit the end of one of these cycles and the beginning of the very early morning when i dig it up, when i excavate the core of it all for the first time. i clear my sobs for a few minutes and i tell you:
“i think you chose me because you knew i would wait and sit by while you hurt me over and over, because you’ve seen me do it before. i think you chose me because you knew that once i fell, and you knew i would, i would take this bullshit you knew you’d give. i think you took advantage of me, and i think it was premeditated. and i need to know if this is what you’ve done.
but before you tell me, know this. you don’t have to love me. you don’t have to see my light and you don’t have to think i am anything special – i am a big girl, by now, and i can handle your rejection. but by cornering me here, preventing me from moving out there and finding someone who does see it, who does think it, you have done something remarkably selfish and evil. and how dare you. my god, how dare you. i deserve so much better.”
this was the night i broke my own heart with all of the truth i could muster.
You may have broken your heart, but you spoke the truth and in the end, you and your heart will be SO very much stronger for it.
I love you.
I once had a friend who was exactly like that: everything he did he asserted was reasonable even when it was damaging and every time I called him on it, it was me who was irrational, selfish, not seeing the bigger picture. People like that are emotional vampires, to borrow a term that was “in” in the 90s. All you can do is leave those kind of people behind. Good for you that you found the way out.
♥ and another one because you deserve it ♥
So many hugs just for you.
this made me shiver. especially in light of our recent Sugar-iphany.
Gut-wrenching, and yet totally inspiring. Sometimes you have to break your own heart in order to fix it again.
I feel like I’m pacing right there with you, feeling the cold tiles and the agony of breaking a heart — our own heart. So beautifully written…