Real II
I want to think that you never felt anything real for me, but I believe you when you say you did.
It's just so much sadder that way.
That's what being cared about by you looks like?
You don't think about me as much as I think about you, and that's okay. You get to have that power over me. You get the privilege and luxury of an unburdened mind. I watched you freely discard others before me; I should have seen it coming. I've heard you assume that you were simply too much -- they couldn't handle you, they weren't right for you, the magic wasn't what it should be. I don't know what you think my shortcomings were. I don't know how you explain leaving. I'm not sure I care.
I've been told that my fixation on you is due to what happened between us not making sense. How is it that a relationship that felt so beautiful and warm could be thrown away so effortlessly? Why were your sparkling eyes staring up at me one moment, replaced by a cold memory the next? Why did you feel so real when you so clearly weren't?
The painfully obvious answer is that I was in love with a version of you that didn't exist. You don't just inspire lust, Burke -- you inspire fantasy. And goddamn did I fantasize about you. Usually not sexually -- I wish it had hit for me the way it did for you -- but about a life with you. Adventures and the crescendo of emotions that had been building inside of me, new experiences and happiness and soft good real love.
That wasn't real. You were less than what I thought of you. You were hungry for life in the way that I loved, but more afraid to take chances than I expected. You were so loving with me in flashes, but more often selfish and petty and small. I waved it all away, assuming you were the best of what you showed. Assuming that you'd continue to grow and blossom and expand. You didn't.
You know your flaws so well, and I admire the introspective honesty it takes to admit those to yourself. You told me, very early on, who you really were and it's my fault for not listening to you. I thought you were able to address the things you hate about yourself. Your weakness breaks my heart.
In the end I just feel bad for the you I've realized you actually are.
I feel so bad that you never learned how to love. I pity your understanding of it now, as something toxic, unhealthy, and dangerous. At one point I thought you deserved more. But I suppose that's the love you give too.
I feel so bad that you're enslaved by your addictions. I wish you cared enough about them to find help, but instead I watched you dig ever deeper.
I feel so bad that you've become a drug yourself, comfortable being used for a good time and nothing more.
I wish I could say that I had confidence in your ability to improve. For someone who loves diving deep, you spend a lot of time in your comfort zones. You spend a lot of time not going very deep at all.
I know that most of what I idealized about you was my fault, but I do resent you for lying to me about being monogamous. That really fed into a fantasy of what a life with you would look like and what I was missing out on. You pretended to be something more beautiful than you are.
It hurts now to think of how low our ceiling actually was. To think of what you're held back by. I wish you had strength that you don't seem to have, and maybe someday you'll find it. You have a lot of life left to live. But my heart clenches at the thought I've been circling -- you're not capable of the love you say you want. You're so poisoned by your normal, and so confused why the love you think you're giving doesn't match the love you get.
I used to hope you could break free. You could get better.
Now I just hope that you're not completely destroyed by the life you choose to settle for.