please handle with care

i started praying to God.

i don't know how people can experience something like this again and again. just the once seems plenty for me. am i supposed to gain some sort of spiritual revelation? am i supposed to feel like a better person after the hurt dies down? what, truly, is the end goal of healing from a breakup?

i don't feel good. i never feel good anymore. i once felt incredibly beautiful and like a girl and like a woman. i've been reduced to apathy now, and the skin under my eyes has only gotten darker. i cut my own hair again, but all i can remember about it is how lovely it looked when it was still long. my desperation is starting to perfume the air in my shitty college dorm room. i'm silently suffering every time i shut my eyes in the dark and retreat to the reel of film i mentally recorded when i was happier. i selfishly hope the other person can think critically the way i think and come to the same conclusions i've come to and everything can go back to the version of life that no longer exists. i keep searching and begging for a sign. for anything, anything at all. yet i know that the harder i pray and hope and bruise up my kneeling knees, the further the cosmos will push what i want away from me.

 

i can't give up! i've completely lost hope.

it's a shame. i feel ashamed and i feel embarrassed that i have to admit that i was wrong. even if it was someone else that led me to believe it. i'm balancing an incredibly fine line where two tethered ends yank me in their directions. he shouldn't have said this, he shouldn't have done that. and at the same time, i said this, i did that. i don't blame him for being scared. i wish i could take the things i said back, or better yet, be more cautious with the words i gave out. 

there are a lot of truths that i've been trying to come to terms with. i say them, i admit them, i learn them, i put them on pen and paper; but, it doesn't change the humiliation. the biggest one? people are not going to want what i want all the time. it's a wonderful feeling when those wants align with one another. but people change. their wants change. their needs change. 

it's not a matter of fighting or sticking it out or pushing or stretching yourself so thin. i've learned to accept that any need to be out of a situation you don't want to be in is inherently valid. you can't force someone to stay where they were never supposed to be. it's like i'd become an obstacle, merely getting in the way and fogging the glass and jamming up the roads.

i grapple with the guilt and the sadness and the longing. i want to clear my name. i want to clear the air. i want to say sorry for rushing. even though i didn't realize it, i was exerting pressure. i loved someone to the point of hurting them. and that's the most painful thing i've ever had to admit. not heartbreak, not death, not rejection. it's me. i didn't realize i could be that way.

without the experience of a past, i thought i was being good. doing good for someone else. but that love i held so dearly was suffocating. it was my responsibility to recognize that, and when the moment came, i latched tighter to it than ever before. it felt like collecting mounds of wet sand in hopes to build the tallest castle, only to realize all of it had slipped through the cracks between my fingers. it was already dry. it was agony for everyone.

i can sit here and i can pass on the blame and i can feel like i was enabled and i can be strung out by unfulfilled promises. 

none of that changes what really happened. in a quest to do the right thing, to just make the other person happy, we were both burned. 

i still love, and i still care. i hope to admit my faults and my unfairness and my naivety one day. i know it won't solve anything. it's just something i'll have to live with.

nevertheless, i'll say i'm sorry.