How Damaged Love Changes You Forever
By Seema Kapoor
Breaking away from a, what’s the medical term they use? Sociopath. I just call it a dangerous, catastrophic, disgusting, chill to your bone, bend in your spine, blood in your mouth type of being, is like peeling away at skin slowly and painfully to expose a wound you’ve been hiding for much longer.
I am using the term ‘breaking up’ very loosely because there was never an official title but we were something of a thing and it was the thing that brought me to my knees every night, begging for a way in. He was charming and beautiful at first. Late night conversations and kisses in my ears made my chest feel light and breathing got seemingly easier. The air cleared and I thought I knew what I wanted; it was a wrap.
He knew what he wanted too and it wasn’t me. And it never will be. I was simply someone to try on, an experience to be had because he couldn’t help himself. There was no real emotion on his part to put forward, he saw us like a video game; passing levels and gaining more access with each turn and twist of a corner.
Fast forward and his Machiavellian outlook on life grew in me, my paranoia took over, I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t stay awake. I am weary now and have no more patience for his unattachment and the roots he lacks is scary to me, something out of a horror movie, can I turn this off? There is no air of redemption and he kills everything in his path. I tried to hold on because I loved him but I see now that love and loyalty and trust are things he knows nothing about. I’m lying here at 5 am wondering where my time went, when the dust will settle and he’s peacefully sleeping because he didn’t even acknowledge me in the first place.
I’m scared of who I became because I wanted to change for him. I had a hand in my own destruction as soon as he touched me. I was hooked and I caught myself wanting to be someone else entirely to please him but that just isn’t possible, I broke. He can’t be pleased because he has no idea what real joy is; being happy or free aren’t things he values, not really. He yells, talks to me with so much fucking conviction and my eyes are suddenly enamored with him but it’s a facade. A game, a silly curtain to hide behind, never to expose the half of a man he could never measure up to be.
I derive freedom and equate love and happiness as Godly and I know now that these cannot survive with someone who doesn’t see God or something higher than himself. At least I thought I valued all of things but as of late? I can’t even look at myself in the mirror without wanting to shatter it. Who am I right now? A shell of a girl who used to believe in love and relationships but now watches her back, looks over her shoulder and scours at the thought of anyone coming too close. I’m unlovable because I am not enough and I know these things aren’t true but it’s what he taught me, it’s what sank in.
I love him but it’s me who I need to choose. If not for any reason but simply because he chose himself over me every time. My love, trust, loyalty and devotion meant and continue to mean nothing and are better off reabsorbed into my skin, as imperfect as it is, than his broken glass. When will I stop stepping over glass for him? Today?
I no longer bleed. I am wounded and deeply hurt and I don’t know if I can trust the exteriors of people anymore but I’m gone. I left because nothing felt right, he isn’t sweet or funny or smart and lovely or imperfect or even a little bit of the sweetness I deserve in another human being. He’s a shell of a human, filled with inherent distaste and rage for humanity and himself. He used to harm himself to feel the rush of something, any type of control. He learned at an early age that to get what he wanted, he needed to take, suck, drain and leech the blood out of others to feed his own malnourished soul. The anger and lack of belonging is in his veins, floating in his blood, boiling away as he slides in and out of whatever he convinces himself is life. I was just a pitstop, nothing more than a set of limbs, lips and skin to keep from feeling true loneliness and inadequacy every other week.
I am so tired, is it time to wake up? Did I even sleep last night? I dreamt he was putting together my furniture but the pieces were broken. Broken like me, so how do I put myself back together? Where’s my escape route? I have this natural tendency to go through pain like a champion, there’s nothing I can’t come back from, no matter how defeated I feel. I’m vulnerable, raw and hurting but I’m alive, still breathing, even if just barely.
In my highest form, greatest self, I’m predisposed to visit the greatest depths and fires of hell to only come back and rise above it all. I’ll take each day as it comes and count to 10 when I feel his name forming or when I have memories of his skin. I will count backwards from 10 when I feel myself sinking into something I know I can’t get out of and I’ll recite my own name over and over and over again until I realize it’s the only person that matters, until I know that I am worth loving.