I believe that when you share yourself with a person a part of them becomes a part of you. I think the level of which that happens varies. That some people can share themselves with others, and pick up smaller traces of the other person but other people, like myself, absorb so much. It can be dangerous. Unfavorable. I fell in love and I breathed in a man for 150 days. When he was asleep in a restless place I would press myself against him, breathing slowly, my chest to his back and he would eventually begin to settle. We would breathe together, intertwined, asleep.
I never forgot his voice. My house still smells like him, and that’s my fault entirely because I have is cologne and I reach for it regardless of my better judgment. When love is shared the energy of that love exists. energy can not be destroyed, only manipulated. I do my best with it, sometimes it is despite myself.
Up until recently, I could navigate all of the energy I had collected. I respected it, I wasn’t afraid of it, felt no shame or regret of it. I am more than the woman I ever was before today. I will be more than the woman I ever was tomorrow. It is because I do not relent. My love is potent, it is beyond a physical form. It is greater than me, or anyone that’s been close to me. I believe that. Love is God to me.
I have loved in silence and at a distance plenty, perhaps it’s time to reveal this side of myself. I see it as stopping the wound from closing before it’s been cleaned out properly, and so this next phase is undoubtedly painful but it is to avoid the spreading of what would potentially kill me.
My love runs deeper than the depths of my self preservation. I love with every ounce of my being, I am at best a hopeful romantic. When I gave myself to the last man I planned to share the rest of my life with, I did so with entirety. I waited for him before he knew anything about me. I spoke about him, specifically. Observing, hoping. I prayed for him while he was with me, I allowed myself to day dream about him fully whenever we were apart. I spoke about him all the time. In five months no one had a conversation with me without hearing of him. I dreamt of our wedding, I wrote vows out, I made lists of songs, I made lists of people I wanted to celebrate our love with, I dreamt of our children, I mapped out our future homes. Neutral colored kitchens and dark libraries with old books that we would collect traveling the world together, with new books we wrote beside one another.
There was no one else for me, and while I knew there were many great men that could love me and that I could love them back none of them were who he was to me. I believed in the choice. I knew there were others that I could make my dreams come true beside, but I chose him. Fully. It felt justified, no man had felt me like he had, I thought.
Now it’s over. My love is within me and without me. I have found out at length that the love that I had, the connection that I felt was me. If I had been felt, I wouldn’t have ever been doubted. If I had been seen and heard I wouldn’t be without him today. I have beaten myself down with blame. Maybe If I showed him my writing more, maybe I should have cut off any man that’s ever made a positive comment about me, maybe if I had just spoken more calmly when he got lost in the storms of his thoughts. Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe he would still be here, we’d still be together. Maybe he’d realize he was the only one, he’d been the only one. He remains to be the only one, still, for now.
My love remains within and without me. Heavy on my chest everyday. I think of the way he used to take the pins out of my hair at night, I think of the way he looked when he smiled, I think of the way I felt when he stood in the kitchen, that grey bathrobe always halfway tied. He fed me food that was cooked with love, he gave me everything I wanted in almost every way. I ignored my doubts, I ignored the lies. I wasn’t enough anyway, and I tried. I tried to be enough. I wanted to be good enough for him. I wanted to be worthy of his love. When we started, when I called on him, I truly thought I was. I would have waited for his growth, I would have stood by his changes, the necessary ones...but I can’t wait for someone that I feel so deeply that does not feel me.
I can’t walk on egg shells. I can’t endure being misunderstood for every other thought. I don’t want someone to sleep with me who believes that I am ugly, internally, externally. He spits words like daggers, and I’ve been known to do the same but it doesn’t compare to the wrath’s of his mean. I can’t hold a match to his anger. I don’t want to be with someone who respects themselves so little that they spit out volatile hatred and doubt about the person they love to repeatedly to come back and apologize. I wasn’t enough for him to stop, ever. It hurts, but it’s better to know.
That person became apart of me. He is in my blood and in my emotions. The one who sees me as less. The man who believes me to be a monster. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. We didn’t make it down the aisle, we didn’t make it a year... but still, the truth rings loudly. He lives within me. I feel the best and worst parts of him, and I carry on wishing the same I always wished. I hope I make him a better man, I hope I bring him closer to happiness, I hope he feels my love. I am a ghost of a lover now. It hurt so much to keep trying to be together that now we are apart. I can’t read his hateful words anymore, I can’t look at his photos anymore. The separation hurts on every level, but in life we often have to choose between what’s bad and what’s worse.
Hell or high water the truth always remains, diligent and present regardless of if it’s ignored or not. My beliefs, my morals, my efforts, my love is the truth. I will wake up and be the wife I was meant to be to the man I intended to be with, but I’ll do it for myself. It’s just like the beginning of May again, except now I don’t have to wonder what it would be like to share myself with the person I am so deeply drawn to. I know what it’s like, and the cost is too much so I’ve gone back to putting my head down and doing the work.
prguitarman
stormborns
snowghoul
vaporwave
areudirty
tangentwithtanner
amandla
