This Is How He Fools You

By

Truth sometimes hits you like a bucket of ice cold water that’s dumped over your head when you’re still all warm and fuzzy from the comforting heat of your favorite blanket, still wrapped around you as sunlight filters in your room.

There you were, in all your naked glory,

glowing from his whispered words that you absorbed in your heart so thoroughly,

his promises seemed to linger and ink themselves on your skin; suddenly truth comes in, without so much as a soft footstep or an uttered hello, pulls the blanket off you, knocks the wind off your chest, slaps you out of your daydream, shoves the reality down your throat, and then leaves you choking, holding on to anything for dear life.

And when I say holding on to anything, I mean anything — even to his precious lies, just so you wouldn’t be a total wreck, because, face it, you can’t handle the truth right away, that fast, that easily. So you still gladly wear the blindfold you’ve worn the entire time you’ve been with him, because the truth is so ugly, so utterly soul-destroying, that you’d rather walk with your eyes closed and your hand still locked in his,

instead of just letting go and facing the reality as you walk unsteadily on your own.

Here’s another awful truth: even after uncovering his lies, you still won’t be able to leave him. You’ll still stand by him for another day, and then another, and another. In your heart, you know that he’s not the person you thought he was, and you see shadows in the depths of his eyes now instead of light; his once uplifting smile now seem more like a devil’s smirk, and his touch suddenly feels alien on your skin. You don’t know him anymore. You never knew him, actually.

And yet even as you see and feel all these things, even as your breath leaves you each time you lock eyes because it’s just too painful for you to breathe in his presence, even if it feels like there’s a perpetual weight bearing down on your chest that’s keeping you from enjoying life every day —

still, you will take his hand, look deep into his eyes, and tell him you love him.

And you will mean it, even if your heart is screaming in pain as you whisper the words in his ear.

You will learn to live with his lies. At least he’s still with me, you tell yourself. So you will settle for make-believe because reality is unbearable — for now, maybe. For how long, you don’t know.

This is how he keeps you tied to a string that’s wrapped around his finger. This is how he fools you. And you let him. You let him run your life. And you love him. Still, you love him unconditionally.