I’m At Peace, Even Though You Broke Me To Pieces

What we had was good, but it wasn’t right. And as time went on, it became more evident. It started off innocent; small things here and there. Those small things ended up becoming bigger and bigger. Then the fights became longer and the arguments more frequent.

We tried to justify it and thought if we could just hold on if we could just keep moving forward. If we could just weather this storm that was surrounding us and punch through this natural disaster that was so disruptive and tempestuous to our lives.

What we failed to realize at the time though, is that the chaos wasn’t surrounding us, it was created by us.

You entered my life like a powerful storm; suddenly and without notice. You were relentless, powerful and confident. You knew what you wanted (at the time), and you went for it. I was paralyzed by you. You came out of nowhere and my life was never the same since you entered it.

You were a storm, and I just happened to be in your pathway of destruction.

I was like an earthquake in your life; unprecedented, volatile and overwhelming. I brought excitement to your life and you stability to mine. We both fed off of each other, but soon we realized that all that energy and passion, caused us to crash and burn.

My God did we burn.

We weren’t enduring the catastrophe, we were enabling it. We were the disaster.

Of course, we didn’t know then, what we know now. Back then all we wanted to do was to hold on tighter, to cling to each other and pray that it would get easier.

And at first that’s what we did, but eventually, this relationship simply became too heavy to carry for either of us.

I look back and try to analyze the entire relationship. I find myself trying to find the red flags, the warnings, the signs that told both of us to abort this foolish plan of ours.

In hindsight, I see many of those red flags now. I know you see it too. The first red flag could be traced back to the very first conversation we’ve had. You told me that you just got out of a long-term relationship about a month ago, but yet there you were.

I should have known right then and there that this wasn’t going to end well. I should have walked away right then and there. But I didn’t. I played the game and got burned. I played you, I played myself.

We now know what deep down we’ve always known. That we just weren’t compatible. And instead of admitting defeat a long time ago, we dragged this on because we didn’t want to lose one another. We didn’t want to be alone. We didn’t want to see each other with other people. We were selfish.

So we stayed, and we stayed. Because it was comfortable. It’s what we knew.

I’ll take responsibility for it. This was my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to stay that one night in Sydney. I should have let you take that flight back home and never looked back.

But I was scared to lose you.

We both could have walked away from this along time ago, intact and whole. But we didn’t. We decided it was better to tear each other apart. Break each other down until we didn’t recognize ourselves anymore.

We stayed until staying was no longer an option.

We both hurt each other in ways that I don’t even want to begin to describe.

I destroyed your trust, and in return you destroyed me.

It’s safe to say that neither of us deserved what we did to each other.

You deserved better and I should have known better.

The crazy thing is that I would have set part of me on fire to keep what we had alive. Until the very end. Turns out that you decided it was time for something else. I’m sorry, I mean someone else.

For 6 months you dragged me through hell and back. The remarkably sad part about that is that I would have been okay with all of that if it meant we’d come out of it together.

I would have been okay with that if it meant we’d try again.

But you weren’t there to pick up the broken pieces. But rather you left me broken.

I realized that there is no one to blame but me. I should have known where this was going. I should have seen this coming.

I just wish we didn’t destroy each other in the process of realizing that this wasn’t meant to be.

It brings me peace to see that you’re finally on your road to happiness. It brings me peace to know that life is going on for both of us.

I find myself at peace, but there’s a deep pain inside me that reminds me that storms leave behind trails of destruction and damage that take months to recover from. They’ll leave behind scars that’ll last a lifetime.

You created a path of destruction that could be traced back to months. And one day you just left without a trace, no warning, no notice, no explanation. You exited my life the same way you entered it, and now I finally understand why storms are named after people.

There are times in life where we find ourselves in a situation where we think if we just keep going if we just keep holding on, it’ll get better. But we have to remind ourselves that we cannot change people and we cannot make something fit that was never meant to fit.

You can’t force love. You can’t force a relationship. You can nurture it, protect it, encourage it, even fight for it. But you cannot force it. Love is effortless. It flows, it grows, it enables. It let’s be.

It gives you peace, not anxiety. It helps you find comfort, not destruction.

It doesn’t restrict. It doesn’t get jealous. It doesn’t lead on.

It doesn’t bring you down, it elevates you.

If you find yourself in a situation where you are constantly reacting, chances are you are in the wrong place.

If you find yourself in a situation where you are constantly defending yourself, chances are you dealing with the wrong person.

You need to remove yourself from that environment. You need to leave that toxic relationship. Leave that sinking ship before you both end up drowning.

I’m not saying don’t fight for the relationship. I’m saying sometimes we find ourselves in battles that we were never meant to fight to begin with.

Don’t fight a losing battle.

You keep getting wounded, and instead of finding out what’s causing the damage and getting rid of it, you put bandages on them with the hope that they’ll simply go away. And they won’t.

Sometimes we are the toxic person in a relationship. It happens. At some point or another, we all will be toxic to someone. But when that happens, you have two options, you can either ignore the symptoms and get the other person sick, or you can be responsible and remove yourself from the situation in order to cure the sickness.

When you’re sick, do you stick around and hang out with your friend? No, of course, no because then both of you will be sick. You remove yourself from the situation until you’re no longer ill.

So why would you stay around a toxic person?

If you really love them, you will acknowledge that you are not good for them and that they are better off alone. Better off with someone else.

There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in being flawed. Acknowledgment is the first step in corrective action.

What is shameful is staying with someone knowing damn well that you are hurting that person. That’s not love.