You Thought I Wasn't Listening

You Thought I Wasn't Listening.

Let me tell you about the man that did not love me because I was not damaged enough.

I’ll skip the beginning, because the beginning’s not important. Except for this:

We were coworkers.

The first time I met him, I did not see sunlight radiating from his very being, I did not see darkness swirling in his eyes. Even scarier:

I saw nothing.

I realized that I was staring into the eyes of a dead man. Every cell in my body waved a red flag and the instinct inside of me that had kept me alive for nineteen years up to that point cried for me to run.

I avoided him for three months.

But you know how it goes:

A series of unfortunate events brought us together (if I were religious I would have to believe that God has a sense of humor).

We became friends.

I watched a dead man blossom to life right before my very eyes and I realized that he was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

In October on this birthday I loved him. And in December, after mine, he broke my heart.

We work together, he reminded me. It couldn’t happen. And because I hate myself I asked:

“Well, what if we didn’t?”

Still.

Too.

Young for me.

Those words echo inside of my head even now, not because it was a flimsy excuse or blow to my pride, of which it was both, but because I’m pretty sure it was a lie. You see, he tried to fuck my best friend. Me and her graduated together. You can do the math.

I guess it only proves how young I was that I thought loving him could be enough. That if a broken man could be lucky enough to stumble across someone who loved him not despite, but in spite of his childhood trauma and unhealthy coping mechanisms, that he’d cling tight and never let go.

Does this optimistic ideology make my butt look big? Sorry, let me slip into something more slimming and cynical.

He moved to Texas recently with his new girlfriend.

We don’t talk anymore but I still think about him from time to time.

Occasionally, I have to fight the urge to text him and ask, “So what’s wrong with this one?” Because, you see, he gives himself away in the stories that he tells.

Tell me again, darling,

You loved a girl with brain damage,

You loved a girl who was shot in the chest,

And, for just a moment, you loved a girl who tied you up and set you on fire.

I guess by those standards my mental illnesses and emotional abuse are just too boring for you, as if knowing you has not been damaging enough.

But yet I wonder:

What does it say about you, about me, about the dynamic of us that you seemed to know from the moment we met that you would not be able control me?

What made you so afraid of the girl with the broken heart that you had to break her more in order to keep yourself sane?