Twilight

By Anonymous

In the twilight of the relationship comes the dawn of honesty.

Not to say that everything was a lie. But that we compromised for each other, out of love.

Each vulnerability lays naked on the floor, sprawled out in scars.

Only by standing in the carnage of what they built together can they see the holes they patched up in the drywall. Only by surveying the blood on their hands can they see the tears drying on each other’s faces. Only by stepping through the ashes of their love can they see the future they imagined together finally crumble.

The ghosts of us dance around me typing in my living room as I step gingerly around our memories in my head. You made each easy moment complicated. Every time I thought we were on solid ground, we were actually in the clouds; we were standing on a pebble, grappling for space. Our perspectives diverged, and have diverged since the very beginning.

I was looking at you, and you were looking through me.

Now, because of this refusal to acknowledge what we were – two broken kids – we are both telling our own sides of the story. We are being honest about each other’s worst flaws. But we are not being honest with ourselves.

So I question my integrity. I book an appointment with my therapist whom I haven’t seen in two years. I reassess the notion of the person I thought I was.

I thought I was smart. But I was not smart enough to foresee this.

I thought I was empathetic. But I lost my patience with you.

I thought I could trust my own instincts. But they led me to the worst heartbreak I have ever experienced.

I understand that I am being hard on myself right now because I have to deal with the possibility that I made the wrong decision. I consider this option out of respect to us.

But it is a direct inverse to my own spine. My own mental acuity.

After two devastating relationships and now a third, I promised myself that I could not lose that again. Over and over again, have I let my own will slip between my fingers, lost to River Styx. So I rose. I gathered my strength and left the toxic environment we created. And still, I rise.