His entire life, it had always just been him. He needed a minute to gather his thoughts and stabilize his emotions. You see, he wasn’t used to having someone care about him.
He had been so used to having everyone leave that when I didn’t, he forced me to.
The problem wasn’t that he didn’t care about me, too, the problem was he wasn’t sure how to. He didn’t expect to have all of the feelings he was having, and so soon no less. He didn’t want me to leave, but he wanted to guard himself in case I inevitably decided to do so.
He was guarding his own heart, not caring that he was breaking mine.
What he didn’t understand was that by shutting down, he was pushing me away. There’s not much I can’t handle, but feeling punished for loving someone is where I draw the line.
I wasn’t leaving because I couldn’t handle him or his lifestyle; I was leaving because he was treating me coldly, differently.
He was the one person in my life who made me feel twenty-four-seven genuinely good and caring for him just suddenly hurt. I wasn’t feeling reciprocal happiness or partnership anymore, and that’s what pushed me.
Maybe I should have given him some space, even though he swore left and right that wasn’t what he wanted. Maybe I should have given him more time.
Maybe I should have fought a little bit harder, or been less aggressive with my own emotions. And maybe I would’ve if he didn’t make it feel like he just quit me.
I wanted to fight for him, but I felt like someone who cared about me to the extent he claimed to, wouldn’t make me feel I needed to. He never made me feel insecure or anxious, and I never had to question his intentions. I made him feel happy, and cared for, and when he realized I could be the real thing, that’s when I petrified him.
Out of nowhere he decided he didn’t want to solidify anything, despite the relationship basically already having been solidified.
“Nothing changes,” he said, “we’re still us.”
But we didn’t feel like us.
How quickly he had forgotten that the “us” I knew felt like wild dreams and overwhelming joy, while the “us” we had become felt like confusion, worry and stress.
I was desperate for the man I cared for to go back to his old ways, and he wouldn’t budge, and alas my feelings started fleeting.
He was playing games with me and he knew it. When I tried to play them back, he became angry and aloof. So then I’d cling tighter, which also pushed him away. I attempted desperately to push myself into his life when he was pulling away, and I ended up wedged between a rock and a hard place. Nothing I was doing was working, so I did the last thing I ever wanted to do.
I let him win.
He wanted someone to fight for him, and when he finally had it, he forced it away. I let the perpetual loner heave me so far out of his romantic vision that I was nowhere in sight.
I let the one person I trusted with my glass heart shatter it all over the floor with one quick shove.