Posted By Afro-Awesome Guest contributor
On Nov 15, 2018
By Echo-voice
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defences, you build up a whole suit of armour, so that nothing can hurt you. Then one person, no different from any other person, wanders into your life.
And you give them a piece of you.
They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore.
Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into shards of glass splintering their way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination, not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart sort of pain.
I hate love.
It was a case of toxic suffocation from the beginning, but I chose to ignore this fact. The warning signs were there, blaring out messages that told me to get out and protect myself before anything happens. I heard the warning but you calmed me. You spoke to the demons that haunted me and chased away the anxiety that plagued my body. You made me so certain that, this undefined relationship we shared was something that had long breached the confines of friendship and was something that was clambering around for more. The hugs we shared would soothe me even after the most tumultuous day and you would whisper how nice it felt to be wrapped in familiar arms that felt like home. That statement boggled my mind whilst at the same time made me understand why everything with you was alright. Everything was calm, nothing hurt, and I felt like I could take on the world.
Except to me, you didn’t feel like home, you were home.
Home.
And without a warning home packed up and left. Moved to the other side of the country and left me to fend for myself. Home took my strength as it found another occupant who publicized their new residence as I watched from a distance. Finally I saw what I’d become, what I was…
Homeless.
In all this my home was still there though, it just had someone else inside it. I was housing someone else. That is when the demons returned, except these were new and constantly reminded me of what I had lost. I now saw what the perfect tenant should have been like. It was my fault that I no longer had a place of my own and even now the pain still eats away at me as I close my eyes and try to forget the comfort and safety I was provided before I let it slip through my fingers. If I had noticed what was happening I would have held on harder, fought harder to keep that sense of belonging with me.
I wanted closure. We all wanted closure. Something that told us that it wasn’t our fault, that there wasn’t anything we could’ve done differently, and that it’s okay to move on now. But I didn’t get it – not from you. And so sometimes you must figure out your own shit. You stop waiting for that apology or whatever it is you’re waiting for, you just pick yourself off the floor and force yourself to get on with your life. You find your own closure, with or without them.
And to this day, I still wonder what it was about you. Despite every ounce of pain, hurt, betrayal, sacrifice… I continued to see nothing but good in you. Time after time, I would pick myself up after being hurt by you once again. I don’t know what those feelings I had for you were, but I believe that in some twisted messed up way, it was love. I love you. I loved you. I was infatuated with you, you were the only thing I was sure of, and I wanted you more than anything else I have ever wanted.
Check out Echo-voices blog here.
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