Why I Write

I write to explain what I’ve learned. I write to try to let out some of the pain that I hold in. I write to find avenues for other people to explore so that they might avoid the pitfalls of my experience and the experiences of others I have observed.

I wonder, sometimes, whether my words matter. As someone who has always been stubborn and distrustful — skeptical of the universality of experience and the “lessons” taught by others — I have always learned the hard way. My first love won’t destroy my heart! We can make it work — through persistence, and faith, and love, and understanding, and sacrifice and teaching and leading by example and everything else…all those stories of failed loves won’t be us. It won’t be me. Because *I believe*. I *have faith* — in her. In me. In us.

15 years, I fought. As much as she would allow me to. I listened to her. I did as she asked to the best of my abilities, but still expressed myself. I sought to understand. I searched for answers to questions that weren’t my own but became my own through my relationship with someone else. I realized that she was a narcissist. Fickle. A sadist. A sociopath. Sad. Depressive. A slut. A whore. Abusive. Resentful. Delusional. A liar. A thief. She has no center. No balance. She’s fearful. Desperately afraid. Suicidal. Bi-sexual. Trans-sexual. Lesbian. A nymphomaniac. Submissive. Dominant. A failure. A success. Irrational. Insightful. Spoiled. Privileged. Entitled. Cruel. Kind. Shallow. Vain. Egotistical. Full of shame. Full of doubt. Full of fear. Devoid of love, stubbornly clinging to the belief that she’s unlovable, even though she keeps taking peoples’ love and never giving it in return. Taking peoples’ faith but never giving it in return.

She is the empathetic embodiment of society — someone who is everything she is told she is. She has no center, and so whatever it is that she is told she is, or needs to be, she becomes. She fears love. She fears staying in one place. She fears being attached. She’s afraid of losing. She’s afraid of being hurt. She’s afraid of having to say goodbye again. She’s afraid of being left behind. So she just keeps leaving people behind. She cuts and runs. She has never let herself fall in love, because she is completely and utterly afraid of who she is inside. She fears the void, and so she becomes the void. Hit a dead end? — no, that’s the destination she was shooting for. I never loved him — he’s beneath me. She can’t let go of the rail to fall, because she can’t see the people waiting there to catch her. She hates being alone. She hates being lonely, but she hates losing someone she loves even worse. So she stalls. So she lies. So she holds back. She hides behind the prison walls she builds, and pretends that it’s a palace.

She is faithless. She is afraid. She is everything. She is nothing. She is special. She is ordinary.

She’s just like me. She’s just like you. She’s just like everyone else who lets fear dictate their life.

I still love her, but there’s nothing for me to do but write, and push on.