Metamorphous

I’ve been mourning my life for the past few months. I performed everything I had for you, and that wasn’t enough to prevent you from leaving. Your departure will always be my greatest downfall. I knew you wouldn’t change your stripes for me, but I had to try. I have no regrets about trying. I willingly gave everything I had to please you and yet I was slowly suffocating myself. I would do it all the same regardless of the ultimate outcome and if that meant intentionally breaking my own heart every single time. I never knew true heartbreak until you left. I thought because you choose to leave that this pain was so unbearable, but the truth is the pain occurred before you left. I idolized you but I despised myself. I would torture myself if that meant keeping you. I lost myself prior to you and with you, I buried her slowly. I would keep digging my own grave to compel you to love this hollow-shelled version of me. I made sure to implement all the modifications that would make you happy. I hid my slowly declining mental health. I battled my profound depression and made sure it didn’t rise to the surface. I managed my anxiety and tied her up in the trunk. I wanted you to like me. I think you will never understand the sacrifice I made and that’s okay because neither do I. I condemned myself for years, I was thinking I was the issue for you never showing up for me. I observed you pick everyone, but me. I still have the memory of you intentionally ignoring me, because you were teaching me a “lesson”. You never appreciated me, you only ever made me feel vanishingly small. I would sit in my room waiting for someone to liberate me and say I’m your Dad. That savior never came and I would imagine my favorite male hero on the tv as my Dad. I would daydream that Captain America, or Captain Jack sparrow would come through the door and save me. I tried to be what you wanted, I played softball, I asked to perform pageants, and I did cheerleading. I did everything you did with your other children, but you never showed up for me. I thought I was too wicked, dull, or simply just defective. I would sit in my room and cry so many times. And when you showed up for one daddy-daughter dance, I vicariously experienced my first anxiety attack at 6 years old. I didn’t want to dance and all I wanted was to go home. I hated being at that house with your wicked wife and your ideal family. You would hide the phone from me, and I would cry through the night begging my mom to save me. For years, I felt forgotten and helpless. And eventually, you gave up trying and I numbed myself from feeling any emotion at all. I watched dads show up for the daughters and I became so angry. I unanimously decided that I wouldn’t let anyone close to me and to this day I cut people out of my life for no reason. I know people are going to leave, so I’m just counting the days and some days I plan for it. I indeed want them to leave, so I push them so far away and it brings me peace. I know you’ll never see me finally become happy. I do believe there is happiness after you.

I didn’t do those things for you, I did them because avoiding and hiding is what I knew. I was so wrapped in this idea of me and you that I neglected myself. I focused on making you happy, what I could give you. You wanted to walk away from me so many times, I requested you to stay. I shouldn’t have. I wish I hadn’t. I wish you run away from me that January. I wish I wouldn’t jeopardize myself for you. You held on to me as much as I clung to you. Why? Why torture me so? You wore also terrified of being alone. I know you never loved me and I Idealized our relationship and set unrealistic aspirations for us. You wore never gonna be with me, you wore never gonna articulate a word to anyone about us. You would never fight for me the way I would hurt myself to see you smile. You loved that I took up your time and that was my use to you. You had no intention of getting on one knee for me, you wore never gonna stay while I worked on my dreams. You always knew I was temporary, but you never shared that with me. I guess I knew, and I also hid the truth from myself. I was a blimp on your radar because I will say that when you unconditionally love someone, the pain doesn’t stop. You don’t let two months go by and think that was a decent run. No, you feel your body ache and your mind wonder. You lose yourself over and over again until you decided to get up and keep going. You cry when you discover a photo of them, you laugh at the silly moments and you fight like hell to inhibit them from engulfing your every thought. You abandoned me in 2 months. You didn’t love me because love doesn’t work like that. Love is fighting to stay; it’s a burning passion that doesn’t go away because life gets in the way. You can’t extinguish love, it burns for a lifetime. But you can suffocate love, you can abandon it and you can lose it. I was never yours to lose. I realized that my glowing embers no longer burn for you, I didn’t think I would find someone who sparks that flame again, but here I go again. I genuinely thought I wouldn’t love anyone again but you checked out of my life faster than your body did. I felt you leave me that January and so did I. When you said you didn’t want me anymore, I knew subsequently that I was falling out of love. I was crashing on the sidewalk. I humbly begged you for precious hours to have me stay, and you obliged. You wanted control over me and got it. I was just a hollow shell for months. You didn’t love me, you never knew me. You saw whatever you wanted to see, but it wasn’t me. I don’t condemn you for leaving, and I find that maybe it was for the best. You see I could never get past you. I look back, and I see the resentment I had for you. I despised you, and It wasn’t your fault. I never got that silver or gold spoon in my mouth as you did. Everything that I earned is mine. I wasn’t fortunate to afford a luxury car at 26, I didn’t live in a million-dollar house. I grew up poor. I grew up estranged. I grew from trauma and sacrifice. I was rich in love but eventually, that came crashing down when my family felt torn. I grew up realizing that no matter what people will hurt you and so it’s better to hold on real tight until they do. I figured I could cause you to love me. If I promptly stopped talking so much, if I stopped my mind from saying random things if I could be sweet If I could be funny, If I could be this person you would look at, and you wouldn’t didn’t despise every time you saw me. I just needed to remain a water-down version of myself. I felt like I was drowning, but you wore happy that way. Therefore I would properly fix myself later. Later never came. And here’s the kicker you left after all the sacrifices I made. Every missed opportunity to stay with you and to please you was nothing but a hazy memory. And I sincerely believe this was the nail in the coffin for me, is when you said that loving you after being gone for two months is weird and you don’t feel any love for me. Then stay gone forever. If two months erase me, then take more than that. Take a year, take 20 years, hell take a lifetime. I’m composing this to say that you wore dishonest with good intentions. And I was naive with baggage that you couldn’t be burdened with. I wanted to say that I finally after all this time deleted all the photos of us, I stopped crying, and I definitely started putting my life back together built from new pieces. You enter my mind sometimes, but the idea of you no longer lingers.

I have been looking through a kaleidoscope of trauma, shattered dreams, and self-hatred. I criticized myself for every departure. I thought I represent the problem every time, so I modify myself. If my anxiety was too much then I would pretend to be extraverted. If my depression was too much for people to recognize then I would be happy. If my laugh was annoying that can be changed. If I was ugly then, I could conceal that. If I was too fat then, I could wear a jacket and intentionally hide from the world. If I was too much then I could be less. I completely morphed into someone unrecognizable.