You Came Home with Boxes

Not the cardboard kind, but the plastic ones. Maybe that was why it was so easy to fool me. Maybe if you’d brought home the cardboard ones, I would not have given you that benefit of a doubt so easily. Maybe if you’d brought home the cardboard ones, I would’ve known for sure that you were leaving me; I would’ve known for sure that those boxes were not for organizing the closet, like you said that they were for.

No. You came home with the plastic ones.

And I was fooled.

The next day while I was at work, you left with them. They carried everything you owned. I should not even be writing about this anymore. I judge myself for being reminded of this brutal day, and I judge myself when I remember and feel the semblance of pain that surged through my body then.

I am at the edge of my chair now waiting for someone else to leave me the same way you did. Alright, maybe not the same way. Let’s be honest. Not many can be as creative and deceitful as you were. Maybe not in the same way, but still, I am fully anticipating the departure of anyone who had the guts to bare their beautiful souls to me, and whom I have, since your departure, been ready to be ripped apart by.

I am ready for them to tear me apart. Like you did. I remember turning my key in my keyhole, expecting to see an empty apartment, and to be proven right. I remember being right. I remember my knees crashing onto my hardwood floor as I buried my face into the palms of my hands. And I fully expect to feel this exact moment again. I have been living my life anticipating this dreadful, soul-crashing moment again.

But what if they actually intend to stay? But what if their intention isn’t what yours was. At times, it doesn’t feel like that can be possible.

I am not writing this because I miss you. I am not writing this because I wish you’d come back.

I am writing this because I love someone again, and I so desperately cannot have this fear of the way you abandoned me, ruin it. I am writing this because I want to be free from being afraid. I want to enjoy being loved without worrying that it is going to end with my knees crashing onto hardwood floor again.

Please.