When The Eternal Optimist Becomes A Broken Person
Your gut tells you the things that your mind refuses to believe. It tells you that the only reason you are leaving their house first thing in the morning on a weekend you were promised quality time due to a “surprise family visit ” is because they are lying to you. In the grand scheme of things, is it really easier to do hurt you in this way rather than just letting you meet their cousin? After all, the only reason you are free on that day is because you altered your whole weekend to make it so. You have people that are important to you that you blew off. They didn’t even tell you they had other plans. Remorseless, they didn’t even try to honour yours.
Your heart knows what your eyes saw. You saw a message come in on their phone that was from “Honey” and you looked away because you didn’t want to deal with it. Because you have never discussed what you are and what you are doing together. Because you have been made into “that person” who suffers in silence because deigning to ask for definition is a sign that you are clingy and weak. You aren’t even shocked by your own words when you put down things you secretly love just for the sake of maintaining the association; to seem cool and easy going. So, even though not knowing hurts you physically, you never ask – you wake up each and every day hoping that day will be different from the last – that that is the day you start to actually communicate.
Your brain tallies all the money you spend travelling up and down to see them when they tell you, “You live too far away”. The distance between you is equal but it is only ever you that attempts to bridge it. You always do too much and then wonder why you never get that back. It’s a lot to reciprocate. For anyone. You give in the hope that it will endear you to them and they will want to keep you around. Thinking somehow that someone who has consistently treated you like an option will one day start to make you a priority. It makes you realise that you have fallen into familiar mired territory – that you are once again crossing oceans for a person who would not even jump a puddle for you.
Your stomach wrenches in pain when you hear yourself almost beg for a moment to see them. Just to be with them. Just a moment of their time before they go on a work trip because you know they will be gone for a while. All it would take is a five minute walk, a two minute run, a one minute drive… But even this is asking too much. You have overestimated your importance yet again and are left with nothing but egg on your face for your hope.
Your hands felt the heat the first time you held their hand. You knew the moment you met them that it wasn’t a good idea. That you were not ready. You knew that if you kissed them it would set your world on fire and this time the fire might eat you whole. You knew recovery would never be possible – that there would never be an “after they are gone” because once they became a part of you they would be in you for life. But you kissed them anyway. And when you kissed them you gave away the last piece of yourself. The piece that was all that remained of your faith in everything and you wasted it. Worse still, you knew you were wasting it while you were doing it.
Everything in you knows that they know you are not what they want. It even knows that they are not what you want but only what you thought you should want because it happened at a time when society made you believe you should be wanting it. You know (and have always known) that people this age, in this society have already met the one person that they want to be with. That for as long as that person is an option they will never truly be yours. You knew they had this person but you wanted to believe you could sway them your way. You thought you were the exception because once upon a time that is exactly what you were – you now know that all you are is the rule. Your body knows things that your mind refuses to accept. But just because you refuse to believe what is right in front of you doesn’t make it go away. It takes more from you than you will ever be able to recover.
And now you have no more pieces left for yourself or left to give. No-one did this to you. Because you allowed this to happen; you did this to yourself. Decades spent hating people for breaking your heart when all along it was you taking a sledgehammer to yourself by allowing it to continue. No-one did this to you. You did it to yourself then; you have done it to yourself now and, if history is any indication, this is how you will continue to live your life – gathering up shattered pieces and wondering why nothing will ever bring them together again. Wondering why you will only ever have broken things where your heart should be.