When You Mistake Toxicity For Love

The alcohol running through our veins wasn’t enough fuel to keep us going.

Which sucks, because I miss you and even though I can still pour vodka down my throat—I’ll never be able to look into those deep blue, intoxicating eyes of yours as I do it.

But, toxicity can only last so long before you start to feel your insides decaying.

I just couldn’t help myself. You were drawing me in like a scented candle with your dangerous flame. A run from responsibilities, an escape from the world, a distraction from pain.

That’s exactly what you were—a distraction from pain, yet a source to it as well.

Making me feel both needed and unwanted, the cause of a tear-jerking laugh and breathtaking sob in a single moment, both a heartwarming presence and a cold shoulder.

It’s the type of indulgence you can mistake for love, because you crave their good so desperately when you’ve experienced their bad. You mistake it for love, because you have found comfort in knowing someone is just as destructive as you are. You mistake it for love, because you have not yet learned what love really is.

I was mistaken, because even though you could make me the happiest—you could tear my heart to pieces in one second, with one word, with one look.

And you did, you always did.

I thought you were an escape from the dark world around me, until I started to realize my time with you was only adding onto the dimming view I used to perceive it.

When you’re in a toxic relationship, it’s difficult to see. It’s when others start to point it out for you that you try to alter your perspective. I looked myself in the mirror and managed to finally notice the wear and tear the relationship brought upon me.

I wanted to love you. I wanted to savor our relationship, but I also wanted to save myself from loving someone who could never properly love me in return. When I finally spoke my feelings out loud, the words felt like ashes on my tongue. The fire we created was dying out and that’s all that was left of us—a pile of ashes and burns all over our skin.

I realized that a soul can’t be fixed by another that is in the same broken condition.

The poison only spreads.

That’s the thing though—people like us are used to pain. If anything, we embrace it. It’s the fuel that keeps us going. It’s the drive that takes us to our destinations. It’s the attraction that draws the curious in. We mistake hurt for healing, breaking as building, suffocating as living and leaving for loving.

Maybe leaving you was the best influence I could be, because our impact when together was fueled with whiskey, cigarettes, and loud music that wouldn’t allow us to think. We communicated through coping mechanisms, through escapes, through our pain.

I wish it wasn’t that way. I wish I could’ve helped you grow, because I knew you could. You can see so much potential in those you love, but it doesn’t mean you know how to help them reach it. I know you can do great things, but no longer can I hold myself back in attempt to make that happen.

Because, I’m still broken too. I need to heal too and two people who know nothing of healing can’t repair each other. Two people with poison filling their veins and toxins steering their minds will only feed off of those addictions.

It sounds so deadly as I type the words, but in a way, that’s what we were.