Every step I take
I'm stomping on eggshells
They cover the landscape of this relationship
Like unexploded landmines after a war
The book explained it
It explained you
It explained us
Or
More specifically
Why there is no air between us
Why there is no peace between us
Why there is little hope for us
The book
However
Didn't tell me what I could do about it
What I should do about it
The only peace it gave was that
The immobility was a real side effect
The difficulty breathing
Being
Living
Leaving
That feeling stuck was normal
It isn't a failing
But a reflection of the deeply difficult
Existence of living with
Loving
Trying to love
Being loved by
Being hated by
Being loved by
Being resented by
Being loved by
Being shamed by
Being loved by
Being eviscerated by
Being loved by
Being devastated by
A person with a personality disorder
gws
It echoed of all the things that have caused me the deepest pain,
and with nothing different or looking to be different, I think the final
piece of shattered glass crashed to earth.
-gws
You are keen to talk about how you have abandonment issues
Well I have a truth you will not want to hear
One I expect you to run from before I'm even done speaking
YOU
ABANDONED
ME
Over and over and in more and more devastating ways
The crimes of those who were supposed to love you that have left you so aggrieved
You visited your own version on me and I was too inexperienced in love and relationships
To understand that I deserved better
To see that you were too damaged to meet the potential I believed you held
To walk away when you abandoned me again and again for
alcohol
drugs
sex
attention
I loved you quietly and carefully with all the room you wanted and more
And you injured and humiliated me loudly and publicly and repeatedly
You'd say "I'm sorry" and act contrite
Tell me you loved me and ask me not to leave
And I stayed
Every
Time
Eventually "I'm sorry" became "Fuck you"
You railed that I was one thousand ways of not enough
And when your abuse of me was painted as my own fault
I believed it
I believed it because it was
It was because I didn't leave
Over and over
Days
Years
Decades
I stayed
You would whisper I love you in the morning
Curse my name, my family and my gender in the afternoon
And fuck me at night in your urgent, singular, drug-hazed version of "love making"
Until you felt better and I felt used
And I'd cry
Hurt
Helpless
Confused
Wondering what I was missing
Wondering what I needed to do to fix our brokenness
Wondering why I was beautiful when you were feeling good
Then a vicious, scheming, calculated villain when you didn't get what you liked or wanted
Unable to receive basic respect from you who was supposed to be "my person"
Any boundary a crime because it was my job to be what you needed exactly when you needed it
And if I wanted something different there would be hell to pay
If not now, then when your discontent and dis-regulation overflowed its tiny containment
And every perceived wrong ran from your mouth like rabid froth
Hurting more than any physical blow
Because I loved you
And all the things I did to prove that to you weren't enough
I did all that I could to be what you needed
And my trying to salvage the bits of me that survived by saying, "No" or "I don't want to"
This affronted you
I burned for it
I often wondered what was motivated by poor mental health and what was just you
I'm sure the reality is there is some intersection of both somewhere
But there is no solace
No reason or justification makes how you've treated me okay
Who else would have endured your storms and torment the way I did
Who else will
Those who had the luxury to remove themselves from your volatile orbit have
And I envy them
Our children mean that I will always have to remain close enough to you to risk burning
No matter our actual proximity
I have forgotten who I am
I have abandoned myself to try to fill the holes in you created by others
A task that I now understand to be a herculean effort and I am merely mortal
And I have suffered in the place of your abusers because I was the one who chose to stay
Who chose to reflect love through loyalty and support both emotional and financial
But I am devastated now
I am a wraith
Embers and ash
Burned up and burned out
I cannot run this marathon any longer
I love you and I cannot endure you any longer
Or I will disappear completely in your flames
I want more
I want our children to have more
I want to give them more
More joy
More light
More laughter
More kind words
More love from a mother who is happy if not also contented
And I cannot give them this while I'm submerged beneath the shadow of your pain and suffering
And I am sorry that I cannot continue to wait for a healing that is so very slow to come
I tried
But the time has come for me to heal from you
-gws
I didn't need to have a reason But I did The reason I avoided that place Was you Was me Was us You see That was the place you decided that Us ceased to be That was the place where I returned to being just me The place where your voice Was replaced by the sound of slowly cracking glass As my heart shattered in my chest Your eyes pitied me While your lips spilled more Shattered glass to fill my roaring ears I forgot how to breathe And my now shattered heart forgot how to beat And your eyes pleaded with me Because you were already gone You had dismantled us Placed the pieces into a shoebox And buried me alive in a shallow grave I love you-s replaced by I'm sorry-s Those brown eyes indeed sorrowful As my soul was felled by a thousand surgical cuts Sundering two halves into two less-than wholes I just wanted you to stop talking To stop looking at me that way To stop tearing down my world Then you left And I stayed I didn't need to have a reason to avoid that place But I did
Do you earn medals for hurting me
Because you treat it like an Olympic sport?
Are my tears some cocktail that intoxicates your soul
For I have cried oceans at your words and deeds?
Is my pain the wood for your spiteful fire
For it seems to always stoke your rage higher?
When did the joy we shared turn to ash?
When did that concentrated venom infuse into your words?
When did you develop such resentment of me to turn your eyes to depth-less stone?
-gws
Grief smothers It slows minutes to seconds Linear experience is arrested And time becomes one, disconnected moment Followed by another disconnected moment Like a damaged film reel Jumping from one stepping stone to the next Each leap a gaping chasm Light too bright Sound too loud Words have no meaning Colors leeched of their vibrance The body feels both weighted down and untethered Feelings resonate acutely beneath numbness Does life still make sense when it feels senseless? Is it possible to live when one cannot seem to draw breath? Grief feels like drowning Tumultuous and savage Full of ache, helplessness, desperation Roiling and hollow Swinging like a pendulum from feeling too much To nothing at all
Though I've felt the inky blackness
I have never drowned in that airless pit
Like a cancer
Depression eats away at the soul
Devouring in whispers that haunt the mind
While stealing the light of joy
Before it can take root and grow
What's worse is we often never know
Until it is too late
There is a great battle
Between light and dark
A war within those we love
And sadder is that no amount of love or light
Can irradiate the darkness away
That void slowly eats away hope
Dimming the ability to perceive the light
No soul can thrive without light
At least not indefinately
Making the surrender to that void
Look like release for too many
Depression is a cancer of the soul
-gws
You were never mine
You were too transient to be considered mine
Too non-committal
But you attached yourself to me anyway
You kept coming back to knock on my door
And I kept letting you in
You wouldn't let go of me
Though you didn't really want me
And I was too blind
Trusting
Hopeful to acknowledge the truth I knew in my bones
That I'd never be enough for you
Because you didn't know what enough felt like
You were a bottomless pit of need that could not seem to be filled
I kept pouring into you
Until I was empty
And it wasn't enough
I always found ways of putting pennies in your cup
While mine lay abandoned and empty at our feet
Both of us left hungry and growling
Snapping and swiping at each other
Bloody
Broken
Damaged
Miserable
And for God knows what reason
Still unable to let go
I wished you had just let me go
And that I let you
-gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 