The hardest work I am doing lately is not shutting down completely. I want to close off from everyone, not just the individual who has ignited this burnt, split and raw feeling inside me. I have been writing pieces of that story here, but the heart of it is still within me because there is the fear, but there is also the pain that is too great. Far to great for me to get to trust.
I am not talking here about trusting the person who hurt me. I mean to trust myself to stay safe from people like this in the future--people who may very well love me but who are also willing to shred me if I don't return their love to their satisfaction. People who, I am wondering, may not even see in themselves that they have left a devastating wake with me in the middle.
Is it possible to sharpen your words and deploy them without seeing they are pointed and what you are doing is actually skewering someone? Could you be so deep inside your own mind, believe that you are completely right to the point that when you tell another person how they feel, you are saying it because you believe you know better than they do?
I have learned to ask questions in order to allow people their experiences, but that is not the courtesy I have been afforded. I am not questioning to change my decision about ending my relationship. I am questioning because I can't imagine a person living so completely inside their reality that they have no regard for anyone else's mental processes, physical experiences, emotions or boundaries.
I know. I'm missing the glaringly obvious. What about Donald Trump? But is he even real?
Trump is a caricature, not a man. The person who was in my life--well, I saw their personal complications. I shared so much with them. I opened myself further than I have ever opened myself in the name of love. I thought they had as well. Perhaps they did. But there was an idea in them somewhere that I would hurt them. It was like grit in their eye, and they rubbed it so hard it bit.
They snapped. It all came down on me. They believed I was trying to hurt them, and they sought to destroy me. When I pulled back, they fought harder. When I tried to stay, they vacillated. I was hurt so intensely that I couldn't stay, but I kept trying.
My door wasn't open, so they tried to force their way in.
I tried for as long as I could before I needed to not try for awhile. When I articulated the boundary, I was trounced, disrespected and rejected. Then re-loved and forgiven. Then destroyed. Then forgiven. Then destroyed on repeat even after I said very fucking clearly, NO MORE.
No more.
For months I thought I could save what we had and not just for me. In fact, it was never for me. It was because they asked me to. They needed me to. They wanted me to. They said I should. They would have. They said I had to. They said I was confused. They said I was wrong. They said they said they said they said until I was so spun around and confused all I could do was hit stop.
When I stopped, what I saw was that I didn't want it anymore because it hurt too much to heal.
That's where I am--at peace with not wanting to spend my time caring for this person anymore. Not only because they tallied everything they ever did for me and reminded me of it anytime I needed my own space, or because they told me every time they presented me with a tally that it wasn't about keeping score, or because they told me too many times that I was wrong about what I was feeling, undermining the work they know I have done as a survivor of violence, or even that they have repeatedly threatened to cause me financial damage in response to any and every request for my boundaries to be honored even though I have honored theirs.
If I leave a hole in someone's life, I want it to be heart-shaped.
I don't want to give this person any more energy because I want to give some to myself.
It never should have had to be black and white. There is no hate. Just no.
I still love this person. Love isn't a light to be turned off and on. Still, what they have demanded of me is something I can't give. I have had to draw a line between them and my love.
I wish it was any other way.
