You made me believe I was impossible to love.
You made me believe I was small, worthless, undesirable.
You made me feel this way. Do you understand?
When I told you I was so afraid
Of being thought of not as a person but a problem-
You liked the word and took it from me.
You used it for me.
Do you understand? You told me I wasn't a person.
You told me that the sum of my worth was equal to a burden.
And you come to me with this sweet nostalgia-
thinking that's enough- thinking you're doing something at all.
Do you know how disgusting that is?
To offer me this, measly piece of candy in an attempt to bait me;
and without ever even addressing what you ******* did?
When the narcissistic therapist who manipulated and gaslighted me, became aggressive whenever I tried correcting her, told me that grouding exercises would be useless for me because my dissociation was already "too bad", made me dissociate more, USED my dissociation to invalidate any argument I made to correct her or defend myself because how could I have an argument when I couldn't even remember the conversation, this woman who for five years manipulated me, kept me small and dependent, all to make sure I'd stay and keep depending on her--
Do you know
what it felt like, to hear you telling me you thought this woman was attractive, that she was "on your level"... Do you know what hearing that does? Do you know what hearing that does?
Do you know what it felt like, that day you went in and were so afraid of committing to my well being and signing some paper that I had to watch as you sat there uncomfortably, becoming visibly upset, as if coming once a week to check up on me alone in my house like a dog was too much responsibility for you.
And then you walked out of there like nothing happened, and you said, you said something like, "I won't make a joke because I know it's serious" and you were all smiles, and decided to cross that boundary that was obviously there and cracked a joke anyway. As if you didn't just seriously hesitate agreeing to making sure I wouldn't starve. And it was the first time I noticed I was so hurt, I couldn't muster a smile myself, and I didn't know why.
You don't know. You will never know. You will never know how sick it felt to live in that place with you. How sick it felt to come back to it and then sleep there. How disgusting and triggering the smell of it was. It smelled like sickness.
You don't know how when I lived oceans away I couldn't turn on the fan in a heatwave because it was the same kind of fan we had. Because it sounded the same. It sounded like being there. And I smelled the smell and felt the sickness but it was too hot and I needed to swallow it all and force myself to get used to it.
You don't get it. I see it now.
I see that I wasn't the ******* abuser. You were.
You, who in that relationship held all the power.
You who took advantage of the fact that I wouldn't leave.
You with the car, and the social skills, and the friends.
The friends who said- about an AUTISTIC PERSON- that I wasn't capable of loving!-
and this was someone I had never even spoken to!
YOU who never defended me in front of these people because you LOVED the fact that they sided with you!
I wasn't the ******* problem! You were!
You think I'm an idiot? I know how you feel about me.
You love me the way little boys do. You're obsessed with me the way all the male therapists were. The way all boys in my life were. The way Hector's dad was.
(You see this light in me and you want to keep it, take it, stifle it, just utterly obsessed about it. You're all too ego-driven to know what the hell to do with it.
You think there's only softness to your love for me. But alongside that softness is a whole lot of unhealthy **** you aren't seeing.)
You came to my house and told me he was dead and you couldn't even hug me. I'm not even talking about the fact that this man did what he did to me, and what telling me he's dead would've made me feel-
You couldn't even admit to yourself, on our last goodbye, that your heart was big and you loved me because my existence, my having existed at all, was an important part of your life.
So you highfived me and I moved to america.
And now I'm here. And I'm seeing it all very clearly. And I don't hate you. But don't you dare think I'm ever going to accept scraps from you or anyone ever again. The offer you're making is insult enough.
You have a ways to go. Get a hold of yourself and face yourself. Let yourself grieve. You're just a person. You have feelings and like everyone else you need to process them. Give yourself the space to feel what you feel and then act on what's right. You cling to me like a little boy. You beg like one. It's not charming. What you're offering
isn't enough and I've grown too much to ever go back to being a person so in need of love that they'd let themselves be baited by such ****** offers.
I did it once when we were 17. You begged me over the phone and I knew, somehow I knew it would be the worst decision of my life.
And it lead to living with you.
The first day I moved in (reluctantly, because you asked me to,
because after some fight with your dad you told me to-)
that day marked the first day of experiencing a perpetual dissociation that has only grown worse over the years.
It has been seven years, Jonathan. I have been dissociating 24/7, and getting progressively worse, for seven years.
So this, this you still begging and longing- longing not even half of what I longed for while with you- is what you get.
Now it's your job to get over yourself. And I'm not helping you.
