Healing

It's taken me what feels like forever, to finally separate me from the 'us' that never was. Countless therapy sessions, seemingly endless tears, nights where I just couldn't sleep because of where I landed after your betrayal. 

It started with questions about why and who, and how could I have kept this from happening. As though time could have taken me back to before where I might have been able to prevent it from happening to me. 

Then came the anger. When I finally let myself grieve a life I thought we were working toward. Once the realization sank in that you never planned on being with me in the life I was building. That hurt more than the betrayal.

When I learned you had moved on, all the lies started falling into place. All the things I remember saying, the conversations that I carried. When I talked about a future you never wanted to be a part of. I thought it was me negotiating a life together. In reality, it was you quietly saying you had no intention of ever joining me there. 

My nervous system was a wreck. You helped build that in me. By showing me I was never safe. My mind knew what my heart would never admit. At least not right away. I remember early on, I slept on your couch one night because of something you said to me. And rather than cry in your bed, I moved to a safer place where you wouldn't know about my tears. I should have registered it then, that this would never work. I slept on your couch more times than I slept on my own. Yet somehow I ignored the warnings. You weren't a safe place for my heart. My mind knew and it triggered all the warnings in my body. Sleepless nights, and a restlessness I couldn't explain. Stomach problems that had me eating antacids like candy and unable to eat real food at all. 

When I did sleep, I always woke up tired. Exhaustion plagued me. I blamed it on menopause. 

I slowly started leaving pieces of me behind. Letting go of the parts that made you uncomfortable. I thought it was a compromise, a negotiation for building the life I thought we were working on. 

You wouldn't know this, but before you I used to sing

I used to smile at the woman in the mirror and tell her she was pretty. I loved her eyes, dark and full of life and dreams. Before you, the woman in the mirror was confident, and happy. She wasn't just alive, but she was living life.

Then you came along and I traded singing for half-hearted and shallow conversations. Because you said conversations felt like interrogations. That should have been my second clue. The second warning sign. The hundredth warning sign.

But then I forgot how to sing. You said you didn't like music so I convinced myself to be quiet. Questions made you moody and so to keep the peace, I silenced my voice. I slowly traded parts of me to be smaller in your space. Don't ask, don't wonder, don't be emotional. Let it play out, see where this might go. Be small, be quiet, don't laugh too loud. Be patient. 

All words that aren't always bad. Yet in the context of a life I was living around you, a painting of a darker picture, one where I was slowly loosing pieces of who I am. Now I am only part of who I once was. 

I silenced my doubts. I shoved my fears behind a closed door where I didn't have to acknowledge them. They were warning signs that I didn't want to see. The signs that told me I was headed for a cliff. One that would cause me to fall and wonder where I went wrong. What step didn't I take, what didn't I drop so I could have slowed the momentum of this life-altering crash?

It has been months. I am still climbing from the wreckage of the crash I have experienced. As I look around for the pieces of me I used to know, I realize they were lost long before I landed here. I slowly hid them away. To keep the peace to build a life you never wanted to be part of but you were never brave enough to tell me.

The anger boils and the rage is white hot as I comb through the wreckage. I gave up pieces of me to make you feel secure. Yet you gave me nothing. No approval. No combined dream of a life together. Now I am just a shadow of a woman who used to burn bright with life. In this moment I refuse to ask the question, why wasn't I enough.

Instead, the anger demands to know, why weren't you enough?! Why couldn't you grow to match my energy? Who were you to think I had to shrink to be as small as you? A man would grow. At least the man I want to be with. He would have looked at me and smiled and told me to chase the dreams, to laugh out loud, to share my life sized self. He would have helped me realize the dreams. And if I stumbled, he would catch me and keep me moving into a shared future. He wouldn't have let me fall and then watch me stumble looking for my dream. He would have handed me the piece I dropped, and reminded me that we had plans. 

I am climbing from this wreckage you have left me in, and I am wondering now, why you were never enough, because I always was.