The Act of Leaving

Playlist

Gaslight 101- Odeal

You broke me first- Tate McRae

Found- Tems, Brent Faiyaz

Know your Worth- Khalid, Disclosure, Davido, Tems

Not an Angel- Tems

All the love- Ayra Starr

Traitor- Olivia Rodrigo

Enough for you- Olivia Rodrigo

You were drained. This was draining. Weren’t you tired? WEREN’T YOU TIRED? Of the repetitiveness of the entire situation? Of the random tears that seemed to even be infinitesimal for the situation but you were too tired to even put effort into that. So you were going to end things you told yourself, you were not going to wait for him to change–you had done that already– you were just going to leave. Because the only thing this ‘love’ caused you was pain. It gutted your heart out, plunged it back in, stitched it with rubber thread and a rusted needle and proceeded to gut it right back out.

Because there was the embarrassment and disrespect. You would later ask yourself why and how you were able to handle it. Where were you even going to start in explaining the different emotions anytime you heard something new from someone different? Knowing that these much people knew about your stupidity because he was going around with that much of them? Because that much of them knew the much of them he went around with.

You would remember how in love he acted, like he would never dare hurt you, all along he was doing that exact thing… How stupid could you be? So anytime you remember how you foolishly believed, you would sob and cringe and feel the tummy butterflies and the nausea because you really thought there was something.

And the lies….

They never seemed to stop. And you had a knack for looking for ‘closure’, even when the truth was glaring, so you would ask anyway; he told you to ask so you believed he will tell the truth. You lied: he lied. And he did it over and over and over again and you always swallowed his falsehoods because he was who he was. And you accepted his stupid excuses, even the most mundane and unbelievable of them. The ones that were so stupid you just had to tell him. But you were skilled in the act of oblivion, obliviousness so you would keep it, but at the deepest crevices of your mind.

And he always knew the right things to say, and you always believed cause you would never fathom why and how someone could say what he said and not mean those words.

You would never know the last straw, or maybe you did, but you would make yourself believe you never did because it was less embarrassing and painful to believe you had not let it reach–and maybe even get past–that point. You knew way before he even perceived it, that it was all going to end soon. And you would swear on your life that you tried not to believe what you heard but it was too hard to not believe…

And you hoped he would meet someone else and she will destroy him.

It was always a ninety percent, never a hundred with him. And you had made up your mind.

You deserved better. You deserved to be loved, to be respected in that love. You were proud of yourself. And you loved yourself too much to be with someone who presumed he loved you. He did not deserve you and it had taken you too much time to enter into that realization. You were seen, you were loved. You were better and you deserved better.

You were tired of begging and asking and waiting for someone to act right. You were tired of just believing and in hindsight it had always being easy to let go because the bad parts of your story outweighed the good parts and the only reason you stayed was because you believed it was going to get better.

There was nothing in this love for you, nothing you could bear, nothing you deserved. So you would leave.