You touched me like you saw God.
Like getting close to me might save you.
And I let you.
Not because I was weak,
but because I had nothing to prove.

You read my softness like an invitation.
Treated it like a guarantee.
Took what you wanted and left
like I wouldn’t notice the silence.

I’m sorry the world hardened you
into someone more concerned
with how you’re perceived
than how you make people feel.
And I’m sorry—
that because of that,
you’ve lost me.

I made a list of things that remind me of you.
There was a knot in my throat but a grin on my face when I thought of dinosaur sheets and the beach in October.
Your mother’s back yard and the shape of your favorite sunglasses and the tea I’ve made every night since the last time I saw you.
What a delicate, terrifying thing to love and be loved back.
What a wonderful thing you are to miss.
My heart has grown softer as I’ve gotten older and I hope the world is gentle to you.
I hope you find a love as great as ours felt without all of the barriers but I hope you don’t find it too soon.

I want to see your headlights cut through my living room window, hear your knock on my front door; aggressive and hurried. I want to watch you slip off your shoes and toss your duffel bag across my 8x10 room. Kiss my neck and tell me how hard you tried not to think of me. Tell me about your new hobbies, the distractions that didn’t stick. Tell me about all the things you’ve seen without me and how none of it meant anything at all. Throw yourself onto my living room couch, settle into the indent you left behind as though time had never passed. You tell me we were crazy to ever walk away from this. That you can’t stand the idea of growing without me, that love is somehow enough to save us from ourselves.

In another life, I’m folding laundry and hear you singing to our daughter in the next room. You are steady and I don’t feel like I’m living something I need to escape from.
In another life, I cook and you clean and we laugh at the kids we used to be. You bring me coffee in bed on Sunday mornings and never get exhausted of me telling you how much I love you.
In another life, our love isn’t dependent on either of us healing and we never reach a season where we have to walk away.
In another life, you find your way to me and I to you and being with you is the easiest part of existing.

A man who loves you won’t call you a *****
or a *****, or say you’re crazy, or say you’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to him
and ******* 2 hours later like somehow that will  undo the memories inside your brain of all the ugly words he’s ever said
So why am I stuck in a limbo of knowing this isn’t what I’m supposed to be spending my life like and staying because it’s comfortable
Maybe if I loved you less you wouldn’t resent me so much
Maybe if I was a little less of this and a little more of that you’d hold my hand in the car on the way to dinner
Why does loving you feel like muscle memory to me
Why does hating you feel like breathing
Why don’t I hate you enough to walk away
Maybe I’m afraid loving someone else would feel too safe after all of the wars I’ve fought with you

Isn’t it strange? How eventually we all become a slave to our sadness? All I’ve ever known is children full of longing and adults full of cynicism. It’s a means to survival and I recognize that. But who am I if not a child full of hope believing that eventually things will be the way I imagined them to be? Who am I without the trust that good is someday rewarded? Who am I without the fairytale ending with the man that saved me from it all? I want to believe it’s him. I know that it’s him. But who am I apart from finding my identity in the trauma of it all? Who am I if I’m not in survival mode? Maybe the idea of it all scares me more than I realize. As if I have nothing to offer if it isn’t the broken parts of me. As if I’ve got nothing interesting to say if it isn’t pertaining to the things I’ve been through. As if I’m nothing except the way been burned.

This is how you’re going to heal.
You’re going to prolong walking away from a man you know isn’t capable of loving you in the way you deserve. You’re going to cry. And you’re going to beg. And you’re going to become a shell of a human being for someone who leaves bruises beneath your skin, not with his hands, but with the words “*****” and “insecure”.  He’s going to kick your front door down when he comes home too drunk and you’re going to pretend he’s not just like your Father. You’re going to hold his head up while he pushes you off of him to make sure he can breathe, and you’re going to look at his phone to find the name of another woman while you’re carrying him to your bed. You’re going to break. And you’re going to tell him you’re leaving while you’re secretly praying he asks you to stay. And he will, because he always does, and you’re going to leave anyway.
This is how you’re going to heal.
You’re going to bubble wrap your vases and fold your winter coats with a knot in your throat. You’re going to call your mother crying; telling her you’re coming home. You’re going to tell her and all of your friends about the peace you have now with a pit in your stomach, hoping if you repeat the words enough you’ll believe them. Peace. Peace. Peace. What he never gave you. Safe. I want to feel safe. I don’t feel safe with him or without him. I feel safer here.
This is how you’re going to heal.
You’re going to let another man touch you because maybe they’ll erase the tattoos his mouth left on your body. Maybe if you transform into the “cool” girl no one can ever hurt you. Maybe if enough people tell you you’re ****, and smart, and too good for him you’ll start to feel like you haven’t lost anything at all. The problem is it isn’t him that you lost. It’s all the little pieces of yourself you’re trying to reignite, it’s the broken parts of you that entangled with the broken parts of him. But the broken parts of you don’t hurt the people they’re supposed to love. And another man’s hands aren’t going to rip into your skin and put stitches in the places you let him in. So you’re going to be lonely. And this is how you’re going to heal.
You’re going to fall back into him, maybe more than once. Because when you’re not with him you’re romanticizing him and that’s a habit harder to break than you originally thought. Because you’ll see him, and he’ll feel so good. In the middle of all his longing, in the way he looks at you. And then he’ll yell at you and curse at you and you’ll realize he hasn’t changed at all. He’s not going to change. Men like that don’t change. It’s okay that it took you longer than you hoped to figure this out. This time might hurt more than the first. It’s the release of hope, the release of the last sliver of you that thought there might be a life where you work out. There’s not. This is heartbreak. And it is raw and real and ugly and it feels like your bones are breaking with no one watching.
This is how you’re going to heal.
You’re going to be alone and it is going to feel like coming up for air. You’re going to listen to the music you used to love and write words that slowly heal you. You’re going to find pieces of yourself you had buried to appease him. You’re going to light candles in your bedroom and fall asleep without wondering what bed he lies in. And in time you’ll realize you hardly think of him at all. The bitterness within you quietly releases itself as you realize his inability to love you well has nothing to do with your worthiness, and everything to do with the demons within him he refuses to face. You cannot heal someone that doesn’t want to be healed. You cannot love someone into becoming the potential you see in them. And that is okay.
This is how you’re going to heal.