survivors' club
Our world was too insular. I never saw you in the context of the outside world. Maybe I liked that. It made me feel special to you, like the rest of the world didn't matter. But it does. It matters much more than me.
You were a test. How many layers I could keep of myself after each time I saw you and convinced myself I didn't want you, you didn't want me. You kept me unravelling as I pushed myself further into denial. At some point, I unpeeled the rest for you.
Now I wonder, what is it that we shared? Who was I to you? Just some girl you didn't need to try around, who wanted to mean something to you so much that she convinced herself that was a compliment.
That seems false and defensive to say right now, reactive rather than empathetic. I can't blame you for being noticed by others, for seeing other people, for boxing me in as an impossibility, for sensing that I'm fucked up and how that will always put distance not closeness between us.
I wanted to show you the ugliest parts of me; stingy, narrow, defeated, superficial, quick to condemn and judge, closed and defensive, self-hating and self-obsessed. And then I waited for you to get sick of me. I told you in all manner of ways how much I couldn't believe in relationships and marriage. You vocalised another perspective that made me feel a kind of hope that someone else in the world could be good for me, could be right for me. But you weren't speaking to me. Those words and what they represented were always a theoretical representation of a better version of ourselves neither of us were yet. A version of ourselves not meant for each other, but for people we didn't know and hadn't met.
You can't compensate for what you don't feel. I'd never be more beautiful than when we sat in the park, I looked you in the eyes, our faces close, the afternoon sun was touching my hair, and you still didn't love me. I cannot change that you walked away the morning after confused and bewildered while I was swimming in feelings of completion and euphoria, the waves of which I still felt, hours later.
I wanted to keep you in a soft space of our own, a place where only you and I existed, free from everything else that didn't matter. But I know I was just the latest iteration of an experience you've had many times over. You took me to the same places, we had the same drinks, you casually placed your hand on my back the same way. I wanted to resist the end I saw coming. It made me feel so cheap and disposable. You already knew how to let me down gently; you've done this before. I cried thinking about how you'd never wonder what more between us felt like, how an idea can germinate in the mind until it takes over and you can't eat or sleep knowing it's so close, yet impossibly far.
You were a test. How many layers I could keep of myself after each time I saw you and convinced myself I didn't want you, you didn't want me. You kept me unravelling as I pushed myself further into denial. At some point, I unpeeled the rest for you.
Now I wonder, what is it that we shared? Who was I to you? Just some girl you didn't need to try around, who wanted to mean something to you so much that she convinced herself that was a compliment.
That seems false and defensive to say right now, reactive rather than empathetic. I can't blame you for being noticed by others, for seeing other people, for boxing me in as an impossibility, for sensing that I'm fucked up and how that will always put distance not closeness between us.
I wanted to show you the ugliest parts of me; stingy, narrow, defeated, superficial, quick to condemn and judge, closed and defensive, self-hating and self-obsessed. And then I waited for you to get sick of me. I told you in all manner of ways how much I couldn't believe in relationships and marriage. You vocalised another perspective that made me feel a kind of hope that someone else in the world could be good for me, could be right for me. But you weren't speaking to me. Those words and what they represented were always a theoretical representation of a better version of ourselves neither of us were yet. A version of ourselves not meant for each other, but for people we didn't know and hadn't met.
You can't compensate for what you don't feel. I'd never be more beautiful than when we sat in the park, I looked you in the eyes, our faces close, the afternoon sun was touching my hair, and you still didn't love me. I cannot change that you walked away the morning after confused and bewildered while I was swimming in feelings of completion and euphoria, the waves of which I still felt, hours later.
I wanted to keep you in a soft space of our own, a place where only you and I existed, free from everything else that didn't matter. But I know I was just the latest iteration of an experience you've had many times over. You took me to the same places, we had the same drinks, you casually placed your hand on my back the same way. I wanted to resist the end I saw coming. It made me feel so cheap and disposable. You already knew how to let me down gently; you've done this before. I cried thinking about how you'd never wonder what more between us felt like, how an idea can germinate in the mind until it takes over and you can't eat or sleep knowing it's so close, yet impossibly far.