I'm holding on for better days

i am so deeply ashamed i loved you like that; wide and open and honest. i used to feel excited about you; i wrote poems about how perfect we fit - before i knew what you were hiding, i mean. the you that never existed. the worst part is that i can lie to myself so well. that i genuinely tried to believe in it.

before you, anger was my least favorite emotion. i told you - i am very slow to anger, actually. most people called me good natured. i just don't offend very easily. anger reminds me of bad men, of emotional immaturity.

today in therapy we were discussing an argument i still feel guilty about. you had never accepted an apology; you held it over my head for months. i kept talking about how i could have been a better person, a better partner. how i raised my voice, got defensive. how i deserved it. my therapist said, out loud, this was also part of the abuse.

and something about that, how starkly he phrased it. nodding at me. the rain was falling. just like that, this thing that i was never allowed to pronounce - just being said like that. the anger came up again, all around me; somehow light and fast and easy.

somewhere in DC, you are probably already "healed" and over it and figuring out ways to pretend it never happened. you are probably telling everyone who will listen that i'm just your newest crazy ex-girlfriend. you are probably lying to some poor girl; telling her all the same shit you told me, feeding her the same bullshit story. (i hope she figures out who you are faster than i did. i hope she survives you, whoever the next girl is).

and i'm fucking angry. i am angry at the time you stole from me, at the ways you broke me. i once spent hours writing down all the individual ways you abused me, line after line, like some kind of discordant harmony. i am angry i will never get an honest apology. i am angry that you likely feel no remorse, that you will never take accountability. i am angry that even feeling anger makes me feel like you're winning. that some part of me still reacts to you. i want to feel nothing.

anger is a secondary emotion. i don't know these days if the other side of her is fear, or injustice, or something more sinister. i start thinking about something you said or did; and the anger hisses up, flaring against my ribs. all the ways i never lashed out. all the things i left unsaid. all the ways i silenced myself - because i didn't want to hurt you, like a fucking idiot.

and i love her, i think. she hops around in my lap, warm and good and glowing. she nuzzles her nose against my wrist. in my hands she is a swordhilt. in my hands she is an open door. in my hands she is a hellhound.