This Is Why You’re Forcing Me To Leave You

By

Before the screaming and the drunken tirades and the sudden vanishings, there was nothing God himself could say to tame how I felt about you. Our love was passionate and it was wild and it was dangerous. Impossibly romantic evenings coupled with incredible sex, passing out holding each other the way only fated lovers can, there was no time wasted on practical concerns like money or who we wanted to be in the world.

What mattered was how we felt about each other. After a long day working for dickheads and serving pushy customers, what mattered was coming home to the one place in the world created just for us, a place where we were loved and understood, where nothing else mattered besides two people and their affections for one another.

We loved completely and without reservation. Neither one of us held back our affections, nor did either of us harbor any hidden motives or secrets, or so I had thought.

Even the closest people in your life have the capability of completely destroying your trust, leaving you betrayed and broken.

Somewhere stowed away in your soul, invisible to me and everyone around you, was a darkness waiting to be released. It began emanating from you slowly, gaining momentum as I held my breath in fear of losing you. In denial of your increasing reticence and general lack of interest, I covered my eyes with blinders keeping me looking in one direction, oblivious to the distances growing between us. Nouns eventually transmutated into verbs in the form of abuse.

Both of us lacked the courage to end the destruction. For you, it was easier pushing me into quitting than ending it yourself. For me, it was easier holding on to someone I loved in hope they would get back on course, steer us back in the right direction.

When you love someone more than yourself, giving up on them is not an option.

We experienced years of happiness. We had a future full of unadulterated love and endless laughter. But then, all of it became sullied and unrecognizable. In between the lonely nights waiting for you to come home and the lonely nights when you were, we lost everything. The most difficult part of all this is I still don’t know what happened or why everything changed. Even your friends have noticed something wrong. You are a completely different person and I don’t recognize you anymore.

It’s as if the man I once knew has been replaced by an angry, controlling animal, snapping at the smallest annoyances. The air around you is saturated with rage and walking into the same room as you is unbearable. I have been patient with your violent outbursts and your misplaced anger and I have given you plenty of time to work through this shit, but I deserve better than this. Any human being deserves better than this. I’m struggling to admit I’m not being treated correctly and I’m not ready to give up on you yet, but my instincts are calling me to quit and the internal dissonance I feel from holding on to this is destroying me.

Abandoning what we have built goes against everything I am and discredits all the fighting I have done to get us back. I know somewhere locked inside you is the good man I once knew, but I don’t know how much longer I can be picked apart like this.

I’m afraid for what we are losing. I’m afraid for you and the quality of life you are headed for. If you continue refusing help from the people who love you, you will end up alone and unhappy. You are going to end up feeling as I do right now and that terrifies me. I want to save you. I want to believe if I just stick around a little longer it will get better and we can get back to the way things were, but everyday a little bit more of me is being eroded away, and if I stay here with you, there will be nothing left but the ruins of a woman who once loved a man more than herself.