Destroyer of Hearts

I did everything possible to convince him I meant it when I said I loved him. I did everything I knew how to make him believe this was it. I tried to help him feel like he was the love of my life, and it couldn’t get better than this. Him. For all his innocence and faith in me, he believed everything I ever said. I wanted to spare him the pain of all the doubt swirling around in my head. I wanted to protect him from the wild daydreams of something more that still filled my mind. But the pain came anyway. The tears and heartbreak. How could I have been so foolish?

I needed a new kind of high, some kind of lasting catalyst. I always felt suffocated in the mundanity of average life. I let myself be swallowed up in my own need for darkness and violence. I couldn’t let go of the need for something greater than what this world had to offer. I dreamt of dragons and monsters. I thought of myself as the heroine, but turns out I’m the villain.

He wanted to take me on adventures. He wanted to please me and treat me like a princess. He was everything I said I was searching for. I still curse myself. I still don’t understand why it wasn’t enough. What else am I expecting? How could I give up on something that could have been so perfect for the possibility of something greater in the unknown? Now, here I am again. Choking on my guilt and chastizing myself for my faulty logic.

Silence might have been better. Keeping feelings to myself. Controlling the hope. But no, I let him believe we’d found our fairytale everafter. I let him believe I felt this as much as him. He was blindsided by my goodbye and my betrayal. Betrayal never comes from our enemies. I tried to make it better. But apologies are meaningless when held against actions. Apologies are hollow when the words I’ve given before were false. I created verbal band-aids over the pain he didn’t know he would experience. Here I am with nothing left to discover or try for.

I thought loneliness was the worst. I thought my greatest fear would be to end up unwanted and unloved. I strived with every action to avoid the fear that haunted my nightmares. It let me straight into the path of a greater pain. I am the villain of this story. I am the monster seeking redemption. But I have no illusions. I know it will never come. In trying to avoid isolation, I have sealed the door to my tomb.

I don’t know if I can wander this desert alone now. I don’t know if I can bear the pain I’ve caused. The selfishness of my feelings is not lost on me. I dove in and committed with everything but my heart. I committed in every way except the one way it really mattered. I didn’t want to be the one to break, and didn’t realize that his brokenness would be the death of me. I should have known I couldn’t be a savior. I can’t even save myself.

How could I have remained silent? How could I not know myself? How could I disassociate in such a way? If I could have just understood my heart. If I had just known my own feelings. If I could have communicated. Perhaps I could have survived. Perhaps he wouldn’t be lying in an emotional hospital bed trying to recover from a desecrated heart.