Would We Still Be Together If I’d Only Loved Myself?

Seeing a message from you used to make my body tingle with yearning, now simply seeing your name just makes my blood boil. The desire still clings in the air, but my inability to have you, to hold you, leaves me bitterly craving that forbidden fruit. I long for your smile, your voice, but in the same vein I find myself repulsed by ever wanting you. It isn’t that I hate you, it’s that I hate myself for still loving you.

I cannot determine the exact moment that my feelings surrounding you became so strong: there are so many memorable moments to recall that I become lost in them every single time. I may be unable to ever connect those dots, but the time I spend reflecting on our time together leaves me in a state of melancholy that feels all too familiar. I stop and catch myself: I’ve been here before.

The familiarity of it all is its own torture. The pain of a broken heart is unlike any other, and the scars can run so deep that they dig into every aspect of your being… of me. It seems preposterous to connect my feelings surrounding you to those of him, not only because I buried those feelings long ago, but because of what a truly wicked human he was. You were never manipulative, you never intended to harm me, just as all the others that I’ve loved and lost…or is everyone really the same soul, drifting between bodies, continuing to come back to claim the parts of me that I refused to part with previously?

When I sit with these feelings and close my eyes, I can see them all right here with me. I can see his sheepish grin and dazzling, deep blue eyes. I can see her beautiful brown curls and the freckles on her arms that I used to find myself getting lost in. I can see his chiseled face and strong arms. I can see your warm and welcoming smile, comforting hands, and beautifully sculpted ass. You were all so different, but you all made me feel the same. At one point or another I lost my sparkle and my killer smile; I was left with feeling worthless, used, disgusted with myself for ever loving you.

I may ask myself thousands of times why I fell in love with you. The truth is, though, I’m not sure I ever actually loved any of you. Maybe what I really loved was the way you made me feel, the way you came to be my savior in the times of crisis I constantly stumbled into, and still do. Maybe what I loved was the feeling of being loved, the tingle that took over my body when we’d touch, the brief moments that felt like hours filled with pleasure and panic twisted together.

The reality is this: I have an incredible illness, a sickness that may never be cured. I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin; I’ve always needed to be attached at the hip to anyone who would let me, like a parasite leeching on its host. When I’m alone, I feel lost, I find myself drowning.

So, maybe it’s not any of you who made me lose that sparkle over time. Perhaps that was simply my brain taking control once more, those voices reminding me that I’m nothing but garbage, the voices that have been there since long before his days or yours. The question always comes up of why I find myself in these situations, repeating the same patterns over again. I cling, I worship those I love like idols, then comes the darkness, the splitting of my mind. There’s the denial, the projection, the emotional hypochondriasis, the aggressive outbursts, the screams for attention. Then, the storm pushes through, and the relationship becomes the fatality in the aftermath, never repaired, just…dead.

I may not love you anymore, but I also don’t love myself without you by my side. The truth is: I’ve never loved myself. I wonder, though, as I cry over this picture of you, fighting the temptation to call and hear your voice: Would it have been different if I’d felt something towards myself? Maybe, just maybe, if I’d found a way to love myself, maybe you’d have stayed…maybe you all would have stayed. But, I guess I’ll never know. I just have to try to let you go.