Haunt_me_then

I looked like exactly what I was. A woman who should be dead from grief and rage but wasn’t. A woman whose formidable intelligence and creativity were just getting born, only she had no fucking idea what to do with them.

The sad truth is that my breakup was as powerfully affirmative as it was painful. It ratified so many secret beliefs I held about myself: that I was especially complicated to love, was doomed to be abandoned, would always be found wanting, and would always be alone in the world. This last is perhaps the most painful foundation for self-understanding. It is a fear that has long taken root in the darkest corners of my mind.

In my keenness to show myself and the world that I had been chosen, I started to warp, pressing myself into a shape I did not recognize. Looking back, the humiliation of it all was in how oblivious he was to my striving for perfection. All the while I felt more lonely, more isolated, more removed from him by the day. Later, when our time together was over, and I finally admitted defeat, the loneliness would pour out of me as rage and despair.