when i told my friend that my new boyfriend loved sports and going out; partying, being loud and obnoxious, she grimaced and said she didn't know why i even liked him. i got angry with her - why did she not trust my gut?

i once told her that opposites attract, so we should be fine. we should have been.

but then came the fighting over little things, then came the mutual devaluation of each other's interests, then came the nights spent on the couch instead of in bed,  his drinking. he would always take the books from my hands and throw them across the wall - *******, he called them. he'd always say i lived in my head, that i never gave him the attention he deserved, that he would take a ******* instead of me any time. and at some point, he had me loathing him more than i did myself.

yet, at the same time, i still loved him. it was like an addiction - i knew he was bad for me, but i clung onto him like he was air and i couldn't breathe. there were nights when i really couldn't.

sometimes it felt like he still loved me, too. when he came to the locked bathroom door and cried with me; apologizing over and over again. at those moments my love for him would crawl out of its cave - my heart - covered in blood, battered, bruised, but still standing. and it would hold him, whispering false truths in his ear. i would always forgive him, because opposites attract. it was just the way he was, he couldn't do anything about it.

even if he could, i frequently thought i didn't want him to. not because i was content with his violent outbrusts and alcoholism, or what he put me through on a daily basis - no. because i loved him, regardless of all the pain he caused me. and love means to accept someone for who they are.

but i came to realize that love is quite finite when all negative things seem infinite.

i hated the way we were so different. where i would sit in one place for hours on end, he'd walk around clumsily, breaking things, screaming, slamming doors.

he drove me mad. and, don't get me wrong, i am not a saint. i'm sure i did the same to him. maybe it's my fault that he turned out the way he did - perhaps if he had chosen to live with someone else, his smiles would still be kind rather than cruel. perhaps if i had changed for him - if i was more like him, we would have been okay. but my silence was deafening. i was convinced he didn't deserve to hear my voice. and he didn't, for days. sometimes he asked if i was pretending to be a ghost of what we used to be. i started questioning my previous way of thinking. do opposites really attract?

and i came to a conclusion. they really do. opposites attract, but they are not always good for each other. i had to learn that the hard way.

and just like a ghost, i faded. i left.