Today I saw you for the first time this year.
I was waiting for this. Dreading this.
And yet it was painless. As natural as it can be. As if a big rock, a veil has been lifted and things just floated into place, just like they were before. Nothing out of ordinary. Not a smudge, an inkling of something being wrong.
My brain keeps saying that everything is wrong.
Today I told you that I told him. I had to. And it scared you a bit.
It scared me too, when I did it.
I was anxious. Christmas always makes me anxious - too many people, yelling, eggshells, alcohol, putting out fires. Not this year, but still. I just couldn't take all of it. If it crumbles (even if I knew it wouldn't) I just had to be honest.
I said that I have very deep feelings for a coworker, even if it's probably a good mix of midlife crisis and daddy issues. That I know I shouldn't, but I do. That he's significantly older than me. 22 years or so, to be exact. That he has someone. That it's been going on for months and now when everything is out in the open it's hard to navigate. That if I just sit there all sad and look into space not seeing a thing, making him worried - it's not just Christmas and me mourning the metaphysical warmth that has never reached that black hole that thrives in my chest. It's me missing you. It's me contemplating what to do, how to live, trying to stop feeling guilty.
I told him the obvious. That the only thing I can do is to try and be close friends. That that's what I'm aiming for, and I don't know how it'll go.
And he said that he understands. That it's OK.
That it doesn't matter if it's midlife crisis, or daddy issues, or anything else. What it is or isn't is not the point.
He said that he understands. He's in love with me too for probably the same reasons as you. He said 'of course he's likes you. What's not to love'.
Me being a mistress, however, is not OK.
It is not great that you want to leave what you have because you found someone new, be it better or worse. That I am not the problem in your relationship, because the problem was there before me.
I blame myself for it anyway.
The only thing I didn't tell him, for whatever reason, is that we kissed. I don't think it would be a problem, I've kissed people before, I've done worse things, went so sex dungeons, but... I wanted to keep that for myself. For just me. Or us.
I don't know.
If I can save one thing, just one, it'll be that. A short, sacred moment that's just mine. Then I thought how that's related to everything else - this being so absolutely wrong, yet not feeling like it. I still have no answer why that is.
He said... That I have a lot of love to give. That I need a lot of love because of how I lived, how I was brought up. When I kept asking if it's ok that I love other people, he said that there are many kinds of love, that he loves other people too, and there's nothing to feel guilty about. And all of this is true.
I am worried about you. I'm worried that by merely existing I'm destroying something. I know I have no say in your relationship and whatever you do is on you, and yet I feel excruciatingly guilty and scared.
Beyond fucking belief.
My relationship exists like this. Yours doesn't. Nobody, and I mean nobody, should be hurt because of some stupid, stupid girl who failed to kill what's happening inside her in time.
..........
Today you told me to run.
Fuck you.
You run. With your fucking clunky knees.
Either walk away if things are this bad, be the goddamn batman, save the mindless damsel, or shut the fuck up.
I want to see. However gruesome and terrifying it all is, and judge for myself. I don't need to be protected. I don't need to be saved.
(God, YOU don't need to be saved. Saving someone is an illusion. You know better than anyone that the only way to be saved, to be helped, is by doing it yourself.)
So don't tell me to run. I hate running. Even if it's after a bus when I'll be scolded for being terribly late.
Or maybe... Maybe you should run from me. Maybe I'm the Demogorgon, and not you. I don't have a long and complicated past, just a really fucked up one. One that keeps me anxious, gives me nightmares, makes me freeze in place.
When I met him for the first time, a complete stranger, I was a wreck. I told him, told myself that I wasn't, that I have healed, but that was as far away from the truth as it can be. I sat him down and laid it all out during that first ever converstaion: that thanks to my father I know what a man's fist feels like; I know what men can do to you when they love you as if you were property; that I have no sense of self; that there were years when I couldn't cross a room without being yelled at; that I've been ditched, dropped, picked up and tossed across the field by the ones who 'loved' me the most. I laid it all out and let him walk out if this seems a bit much.
And for some reason, he stayed.
I thought, I still think, that I'm a spawn of Satan. That I'm broken beyond repair. Then he points to the above and reminds me that even with everything that's happened I'm still a good person. I still love, still create, still give more than I can.
'It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate / It takes guts to be gentle and kind' - I hum to myself. It's been years and this is still one of my favourite songs.
And you... You're so desperate to be seen as a beast. To run. For me to confirm, for some stupid reason, that that nail you've been hammering into your own head for years - that bullshit thing - is truly a nail and not just a sum of things that made you who you are, be it good, bad, or just hurt.
So why do I hear a faint purring when I touch your cheek, mr beast?
That nail, whatever it is, didn't give you an emotional lobotomy. It didn't turn you into something else. You're still a human worthy of good things, of love.
I think it's not a nail at all. I think it's a dandelion.
So either walk away. Run. Save me, if you will.
Or shut. The. Fuck. Up.