‘Til the world caves in
It was always like her to drop a bomb on me and run.
The first time it was the abortion she’d had before we met. Then a few months later, it was the ex who pushed her around. (She was ever careful not to say he hit her, because in her mind, there was a difference.) And the night we finally ended, she told me how she’d just figured out it all went back to when she was eight and her uncle used to babysit her, among other things he’d done that she hadn’t felt comfortable telling me until our world was crumbling around us.
I initially thought these were cries for help, her way of asking me to drive away the demons, but she was always incensed when I would try. Yeah, I was young and stupid enough to think I could fix her.
These moments were always tempestuous, as if true intimacy needed a grand entrance. The revelations always came out during a fight, some sort of unrest that would take at least a few days to smooth over, even without her bursts of candor. I eventually realized these were the battering devices meant to drive me away.
A few months after we were over, she confessed tearfully that she didn’t feel as beautiful as I tried to tell her she was. At first, she said, the compliments were charming, but as time wore on the charm wore off. She said that by the last few months she just knew I was lying, that the only reason I would’ve been so nice to her was so I could take advantage, like everyone who came before me.
And her defensive disposition was almost justified by the bulk of her experience. She’d been abused, and she had a way of re-gifting much of it on to me. But she was beautiful, despite the battering ram of truthful outbursts she’d been conditioned to blurt out to anyone who stood by her too long.
I knew I was miserable with her, but I often felt my misery was negligible compared to hers. I felt that it would be good for me to stay and try reinforce my view of her, until she believed me—but she just resented it more and more. Still I held on ‘til the illusion came crashing down, and I finally grasped there was nothing I could do to make her happy. The only thing I could do was get out of her way and hope someone else could do what I couldn’t—help her see the reality that lay beyond the dirty film that had been kicked onto her view of the world.
The hardest realization was the one telling me this woman I cared so much about actually had a better chance without me—that for her own world to be reborn, the one we shared had to be destroyed.
Is no one here at all?
Is there any net left that could break our fall?
and the hungry, poor and deserted are found.
Are you discontented? Have you been pushing hard?
Have you been through and down this broken house of cards?
-Switchfoot
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