A Fidelity to Her

We yearn so badly to be healed by the same people who broke us in the first place. We cram them into the small space we have left, hoping they have good intentions. We give them multiple chances hoping they will change, and I don’t know if it speaks less of them for taking advantage or less of us for choosing not to accept who they truly are.

I encountered unrequited love and its flaming passion. Misguided. Given the various definitions we all have about love, I still wouldn’t say I know what love is. Maybe the only kind of love I cherish hurts. It whips like a storm through my life and destroys everything in its path. It unearths my insecurities and fears, and just like that it’s gone, leaving me to build and rebuild, no foundation, no substance, just a better part of who I am, scattered for miles.

Or maybe I stayed longer than I should have because I know what it feels like to have someone give up on you.

I was patient and I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but I was still let down. And there I was, a slave to my own sadness, subjecting myself to disrespect, medication, alcohol and the next empty relationship, all based upon the mistreatment of someone who failed to love me the same, putting my heart at risk every time I let him let touch me.

There were nights where I could not let go of his memory. It came for me at night. I would feel its consuming presence as it entered my space and shared my bed, my room filled with soft breathing and sounds of owls celebrating the darkness. Feathery caresses beginning their transit up and down the nape of my neck and my mind the clay in the hands of its maker.

And every day I magic myself alive again from the near-death experience of trauma. I swallow my heart back from its lump; it had stopped in my throat. I taste my own memory without the flavour of blood but as poetry. I learn to whisper my name without feeling like a curse. I murmur spells to the parts of me others have found too dangerous to love, for my heart has experienced more pain and tribulation than it knew it could bear, and the things it wishes it could have shut itself to are exactly the same things it remains open to, for I know that if history of our unrequited love was to be written, he would refuse for the truth to be told.

Like you, my independence was destruction. It was an excuse for why I was not the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. I did not deserve to be loved correctly, and my independence was something that should not be celebrated nor supported. It made me unlovable. It meant that I always had to fight alone. I did not deserve the deepest love that did not have to compromise with my strength and dependence, and too much of my life I have apologised even when I was not wrong, all to make situations better, and I still went to being the same person.

I was scared of letting go, because I did not want the process of healing. What if time won’t do what it’s supposed to do? And then I will be stuck, still continuing to choose him over everything else whilst he chooses another, both chasing a profound feeling that neither are prepared enough to receive, let alone nurture? This is what I’ve always come to ask myself in lonely hours, but I lied to myself. I edited my thoughts so he would seem like a better man and censored my words so our history wouldn’t seem as bleak. I weighed more with the burden of trying to make it right, that I can admit.

But one day I woke up different. I woke up done trying to figure out who was with me or against me or walking beside me because they didn’t have the guts to pick a side. I was done with anything that didn’t bring me peace. I realised that opinions were a dime a dozen, validation was for parking and loyalty was not a word but a lifestyle. It was this day that my life changed, not because of him but from realising that my closure didn’t come from him. It came from knowing deep in the middle of my heart that I did everything I could. That I did more than compromise or sacrifice, I became a whole new person just to accommodate him, yet that still was not enough.

Tell us: What did you learn from this chapter?