When You Can’t Let Go Of Someone Who Is Not Good For You

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Being in love makes even idiot noise sound good. You know what it sounds like. When you realize someone you care about is feeding you bullshit, but you still want them around- that’s when you know you’re in trouble. One person has you in their grip. You become in awe of them, and then suddenly everything that comes out of their mouth is gold.

Goddamn, get it together.

I found out this fact only recently: You can get lost in someone’s eyes, and then you forget what real life is. And for the first time your whole damn life, you feel special. It’s like the two of you are in on something that no one else could understand. In the beginning, I ventured cautiously into his eyes for a quick swim, but now I am drowning in them. I want to savor everything. I want to fall into him.

Sometimes he looks at me and he just looks shocked, like he can’t believe that I’m real and I’m there holding his hand. I always hold his gaze, I always look back when he looks at me in that way. He used to need me all the time, but now it seems he walks in and out of my life whenever he pleases.

It’s like we fit so well together, but something is holding both of us back. Something inside each of us can’t help but continually hurt the other. I don’t know why he always comes back to me and I don’t know why it always ends up like this again somehow. But I’m sick of reaching out to him. I wish he would reach back.

It was when I was sitting on the edge of his bed over a year ago, listening to the gentle rise and fall of his breath as he slept, that the sensation came over me: “Something is wrong with this picture. Something is wrong in this room.” Now I think I’ve figured it out. Some element of sorrow in him connects with some element of sorrow in me, but that’s all it is: sorrow. Two sorrows don’t make a happy. We hold each other like it’s the end of the world but we’re the ones destroying it. When he pushes me away, he pushes hard; and when I fall for him, I fall hard.

I drove past his old apartment the other day for the first time in months, and it felt like nothing had changed, like we were still together. It all felt so familiar, like I was visiting an old friend, not a torn piece of a past life. Memories came flooding back with every turn of the steering wheel. And he felt so present, so tangible in those moments, like I could just reach out to him like old times. But there were someone else’s lights in his window.

I used to think, look at how fast we’ve moved through time without really going anywhere; look at the mess we’ve made of our hearts. But I didn’t care. Going weeks without speaking was worth it because I knew when I saw him again, our reunion would be that much sweeter. So I’d been savoring the blessed, twisted torture, the good and bad, the feeling of fingertips on skin, the passionate mingling of lips, and the burning electricity that ignited every time as green gaze tumbled into blue. I’d been holding onto him right up until this very moment, sitting in his bedroom, when I see her name light up on his phone.

Some piece of me will always be in love with him. It hurts to think I can have such intense feelings for someone who can’t stop disappointing me.

And it sure is nice to think that while I was reliving memories of his arms around my waist, pulling me closer, to help me fall asleep, he was in his apartment f*cking her. Sure makes me feel good that while I was dreaming of his green eyes and the way they look at me, he was dreaming of her lips and her sumptuous breasts and velvety vagina, some things which I guess were never good enough on me.

His phone sits there between us on the bed. In his dimly lit bedroom, his eyes now look like shallow pools of poison, poison I’ve lapping up like honey. I walk away from him and his phone and her name. I choose not to hear his protests and excuses. I get in my car and drive to Liam’s house. In the morning I kiss him, hard. He is very willing to touch me, but when he does I feel nothing.

He pulls back and looks at me and smiles, a little too smugly. “What was that for?”

I look into eyes that are not green. “I’m sorry, my heart is broken.”