Clandestine Confessions

What had become of me?

Abused and used.

Scarred and scared.

Beaten and broken.

Wounds covered me – internally and externally.

One a consequence of the other.

A gaping gash in my heart bleeding out my dreams, my desires, my trust, my safety.

The cuts on my arm a plea to stop feeling.

–

My ex was the only one to see them this time around.

Helping me with my taxes at his desk, the sweatshirt sleeve rolled up.

“When? When did you do this?”

The volume rising in correlation with the rage.

I knew that face all too well – the one with the strength to scare me into submission.

The creator of shattered glass, cracked monitors, broken chairs.

My hands cleaned up each mess while I talked myself out of this being a cause for concern.

“It is just one time,” I would say, softening the severity to restrain my pain.

Just one time each time…

My heart shouted otherwise.

Cutting itself on each shard of chaos.

Becoming more fragmented with every attempt to bring back order to the disorder of this love. 

The mind got louder to cover up the truth.

–

It was three nights before.

On my closet floor.

It wasn’t the first collapse that room has seen.

That was home to my breakdowns for that past year.

It happened minutes after hanging up with someone over facetime.

Him abruptly ending when I refused to cater to his needs.

Because amidst my efforts to save him from his addiction, I became the drug to feed it.

And do you know what happens when you give an addict what they want?

They come back needing more.

The demand for his fix was growing and my supply of low self-worth was shrinking.

Which meant the pressure had to intensify, the cost had to increase.

And I spent myself into an emotional debt.

–

“It is me,” he kept saying.

And perhaps that was the problem.

It was him.

The one I at one point did give my trust to so fully – now abusing it.

Using it to his advantage.

Putting me in situations that were anything but safe for my heart, my mind, my body.

Who was he anymore?

I was staring at a stranger.

Blind to my suffering.

Callous to my cries.

The one who used to so gently wipe away my tears, promising me this pain was not my forever, now the maker of the despair.

–

How did we get here?

I kept thinking he would come back. Surely the man I have always known will return.

He had to…

It is why I stayed.

It is why I kept choosing him.

Through tragically unspeakable acts.

Disastrously heart wrenching moments.

Utterly confusing and chaotic choices.

Deceitful attempts at stealing what is sacred.

Waiting. Praying. Conforming.

Wondering if perhaps who I became in the time apart forced this version to exist.

Or the scarier part, perhaps it awakened who was always there.

But regardless of all I tried and all I gave, he never came back.

And my heart breaks more for him for that than it does me.

–

So afraid to admit I felt anger towards him, I took it out on myself.

So afraid to admit how much fear of him I now felt, I took it out on myself.

So afraid to admit he had it in him to be this cruel, I took it out on myself.

I let my body own his blame.

–

It was never supposed to be this way.

And I was never supposed to become this woman.

In this closet.

Creating wounds.

Living a life that lost its radiance.

Once vibrant hues of color turned to a violent shade of black.

Each moment of betrayal stealing my breath, the suffocation leading to contemplation of my end.

I swore by the truth love heals.

And yet it held the killshot.

–

“Please take it away God.”

The prayer I uttered in repeat in desperation for this all to be over.

Not yet numb enough for the tears to not fall in my pleading.

But it wasn’t the pain I was asking to be removed.

It was him.

The one I swore I could never live without.

Because there I was now dead, living with his presence.

–

And thus began the beginning of the end.

–

“It is fine. I’m fine. All is fine,” I told him, grabbing back my arm from his grasp. The sleeve now halfway up my arm as he assessed the damage.

“This is exactly why I cannot trust you to be by yourself. Why do you do this to me?”

I suppose I missed the part where these wounds were on him.

He wasn’t the one hiding his body with an oversized sweatshirt…