To The Man Who Thinks People Are Things

I don’t need you anymore.

I don’t need any more of your pretty lies or your coldly manufactured feelings.

I don’t need another empty kiss or ignored phone call.

You only had me fooled in the very beginning. Soon, I was onto every play, every time you used my feelings against me. Every time you reeled me back in at the last minute. Every flash of smug victory in those sleepy blue eyes.

I knew.

I knew I was a puppet for you.

But there is something in the heart of someone like me that is so different from someone like you. Someone like me, who so intensely feels the pain of others. Someone who has been hurt by people they loved and cannot imagine intentionally doing that to others. Someone like me cannot find a way to wrap their mind around the fact that people like you exist. People who are so devoid of feelings like compassion, empathy, or remorse that they just go barreling through people’s lives like some sort of charismatic wrecking ball. People who sniff out the sensitive souls, the empaths, with laser like precision, and immediately start using their forgiving, understanding nature against them.

You know no love, no bonding, no intimacy, no boundaries, no shared vulnerability, no trust. You only know manipulation. There is always a self-serving ulterior motive.

The relationship is never symbiotic….it is parasitic.

You attach like a parasite to the heart of a kind and loving person. You drain them of their energy to feed your bottomless pit of selfish needs. You trick them all the while into thinking you care, only to throw them away and then pick them back up at your convenience.

People are just things to you.

Well, I am not one of your things anymore.

I may have had moments where I missed your eyes or the way that it felt to lay next to you, but I have never missed the way that I felt each time I left- empty, foolish, used, and more lonely than before.

I have never missed the way it made me feel when you made a point to rub the other ones in my face to bolster your hungry ego.

I will never miss feeling completely insane for trying to believe it would be different each time you convinced me to come back.

I will never miss you making me feel like an addict again, completely controlled by your endless stream of lies.

There was a time when I believed that it wasn’t your fault for being the way that you are. Much like me, and like so many others, you were broken. You had been hurt. I let that sway me, let it excuse your countless offenses, in fact, I made your excuses for you….you didn’t even have to. And for that, I am highly responsible. But something occurred to me, after so much of the pain you inflicted, after so many broken promises, disappointments, and completely hollow apologies. It occurred to me that there are MANY people out there who have been hurt, who have been through hell, who have been challenged and almost broken by life, myself being one of them, but they do not make a career out of hurting people that they claim to love….over, and over…and over.

Though I have untangled myself from the web, the scars of your bite remain. Perhaps the most devastating impact of all is the one that haunts me now. The remnants. The aftermath.

I am now a person climbing into a vehicle after a severe car accident. Braced, preparing for disaster. I find myself constantly trying to shake the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. You distorted my reality so thoroughly for so long that I no longer know what is real. You lied to me so many times about so many things that everything is potentially a clue to someone being dishonest. You broke my ability to trust that someone would want me in their life without ulterior motives, would care for my heart and not break it, and would want me for the person I am, and not as a source of supply for their ego.

But I will not let you have that. I know that you would love nothing more than to continue to hold power over me despite the fact that I broke free. That’s always been the game, hasn’t it? It was never about love for you. It was about possession, power, and control.

So now, piece by piece, I rebuild. I may have been easy prey because of my insecurities, my compassion, and my heart, but what you didn’t know, because you never cared to truly get to know me, is that I always get back up. I know how to rebuild. I have made it my life’s work. The trauma you inflicted ended the last time I walked away. I refuse to let you continue to hurt me from afar.

I am not angry at you.

I am nothing at you.