I Didn’t Know Then That I Could Never Be Enough For You

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I used to think it was some sort of twist of fate that we kept ending up in each other’s lives, crossing each other’s paths, because a series of coincidences like that can make one start to believe in destiny and serendipity and other nonsense. It was a scene out of a Lifetime movie, our eyes meeting like magnets and pulling us into each other, away from the distracting, noisy room. Mutual attraction foretelling the anticipation of first shy interaction.

Isn’t that how it always starts?

I didn’t know, then, that countless hearts had resided in your palm before mine. I didn’t know that somebody long before me had ripped out your heart and then stomped on it, leaving nothing but gaping wounds in you. I didn’t know then that the only way you knew how to handle life was to keep hitting your own self-destruct button, or how much trouble that would cause me.

It was never about me or her or any of your other girls. It was always about you and your fucked up head.

I became a crutch for your happiness, like so many other things in your life. I became a vehicle to launch you into what you thought would bring you pleasure and fulfillment. Those emotional highs became intoxicating.

Dangerous. Each high became more important than the last. You kept me in your head as a diversion so that you would never have to face your own reality.

But I’m no redeemer and we had no destiny.

In another life, I thought. Maybe in another life, you wouldn’t have been born with that permanently broken heart of yours, and then maybe you could have loved me with your whole being, not fragments of it. Then maybe I wouldn’t have been one of your many crutches. You’ve become your father, and everything you swore you wouldn’t. But I’ve realized that your broken past is no longer my present.

We met, and there were no colliding planets, no exploding stars, no bolts of lightning. I could never be enough for you, because nothing is enough for you.

You are not enough for you.

I wish you would save yourself. I truly do.

But you are you and you are going to do what you do. And I had to go, because it was never my role to be a crutch. It was never my destiny to be a broken-hearted savior.