"To think that I've wasted years of my life, that I've longed to die, that I've experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn't appeal to me, who wasn't even my type." Marcel Proust, Rememberance of Things Past, Volume I

The cost of starvation

They took three years and wore me down to the bone. I was full of love and pleasure and now I am empty and fearful of giving myself away ever again. 

They were drawn to me because I was light and shiny and they captured me and held me, suffocated me with obtuseness and left me wishing for escape, believing he was there to save me when in fact he was there to starve me.

He made sure I was there and then he slowly took away the loveliness and magic we shared, letting it whittle away, asking for more of me, pressing, always pressing but never giving and taking, always taking, but never giving.

I challenged him as best I could and tried to be the best of myself for him. I wasn't always good but I've never been better. No one has ever gotten this much of me. And maybe he came and captured me to show me that I could love again and maybe that is the hope I should cling to, because the rest of it feels so contrived in hindsight's strong hand, that he was saying all the right things but he didn't know how to do them and that once again I gave my heart to someone that didn't deserve me and didn't respect me and didn't love me and left me hungry, starving for love.

Now I sit, having to resume my life, the life I was shedding, I rejected my home, my city, everything that meant anything to me, even tailored parts of myself to suit him, I feel more devastated than ever, than any of them have left me, even the worse ones, even the mean ones left me better off than this, because I didn't have to give everything up for them, I didn't have to prove myself, I didn't have to embarass myself the way I have for him.

I'm not mad, I'm not sad, I'm not even shocked, I'm simply numb from starvation, from the circumstances the last three years have served from the two of them, how forever I will avoid any of them that say they were born the same day as either of them, because even though they are very separate beings they both had the same obtuseness, that same entrapment under that mountain of insecurity and self doubt, that same murkiness, the depths of which were rarely shown and when I did manage to get a glimpse, even the hint of the darkness they kept so hidden terrified me to no end.

None of that matters now, because they taught me a valuable lesson on exactly who and what to run screaming like a banshee from. I will never try to love another that cannot accept my love and adoration and dismisses it on the grounds of their own self loathing.

All there is to do now is feed my hungry spirit and nurture my starving soul. It is already getting better, but there are so many things that ache with his presence, so many symbols we shared, so much we imbibed with magic and wonder and that will lesson as time passes, but it seems to move very slowly right now and the morsels of life I once enjoyed so easily and readily touch my lips and revive me bit by bit, reminding me that even though I struggled so hard, hard enough to alter myself completely, transformed, whittled down, I am still very much alive. And no matter how much they live, they will never know what that is or how that feels, to be alive, to love and to be loved, because they are incapable of it, they find it all a mystery and that is what nulls any moment's anger I am able to muster. 

goodnight moon

He asked, "Are you bringing anything with you from Canada?"

I laughed inside at the irony and said, "No, nothing."