Devoured by a Love That Was Never Real

My heart yearns for the love you vowed to fill in spaces that had been sealed.

My soul for the peace you once briefly brought.

My mind for the hopes and dreams you created-the idea of finally being loved by a partner, a family, and a home.

I have spent the better part of every day and night focusing on this yearning. Praying that my yearning and tears are enough to one day bring you back into my life. Even if it’s not this life but the next.

Completely blinded by the deception that cloaked these dreams.

The validity of who I yearn for.

Does it even exist?

Have I been yearning for a wolf in sheep’s clothing?

A magician casting spells?

Has it been murky mirrors distorting reality all along?

Elaborate illusions and not reflections of any truth?

Oh, I have been so foolish! Devoured in a manner that has ripped every part of my being. Discarded like foul filth.

The person I once was now a distant memory. As I vaguely recall-a strong independent woman. As if I lost who I was the day I married you. Or was I just a fool to believe this is who I was in the first place?

No! You came into my life for this very reason-my strength and resilience! You watched me and my every move. Observing me like a predator does its prey. Studying the light of my soul and my dreams taking flight. You explored the chambers of my heart. Caressed and fed each part of me, making me fall at your feet.

You saw my ambitions and demanded it.

Saw my maternal nature and demanded it.

Saw my beauty and demanded it.

So much so that you devoured it all for yourself. Especially, when my strengths included more than you anticipated.

Now I’m left with a mind so fractured, a heart so broken and a soul afraid to search for anything meaningful again.

Afraid to even let the idea arouse and tantalize me.

Afraid of the mere conception of it for fear of further destruction to whatever remains.

I opened myself up to you like a flower blooming. Not realizing you were sowing seeds of despair, self-doubt, self-loathing and confusion. With each look or unsaid word, depleting me of my basic nourishment until I had nothing left to feel but fear.

Where were you when all I wanted was to feel safe and protected?

The only protection I had was my body guiding me to feel the truth. Even if my mind could not perceive it as yet.

Feeling it through knots in my stomach, vibrating muscles, trembling hands and confusion. Ridden with fight or flight became my every minute turmoil until the one thing that was protecting and guiding me became the one thing I loathed vehemently.

Oh body, why are you letting me down like this? Why will you not give me peace? Why are you torturing me this way? Hating my body for making even everyday tasks impossible.

Not realizing that my body was the only transparent and truthful thing in my orbit. While the partner that should have been protecting me lay lurking in shadows.

My body could sense the subtle hesitation in your voice or the contradiction in your actions, words and body language.

When everyday conversation sent my body on a rollercoaster of firing nerve endings and trembling.

When my insides are curdling at something so trivial yet ominous I can’t even decipher the meaning of it all.

With chaotic pools of blood-drenched doubts threatening me, my mind could not perceive that which my body already knew of you and the dark secrets you possessed.

With this fierce defense came a deep exhaustion, for my poor body had worked hard to protect me from danger.

I left you depleted of nourishment, care and love. With bags under my eyes, off balance and dreaded anxiety I will never fathom. I ran from you with tired muscles and a shattered heart. All of which left my body forgetting how to instinctively recharge.

My body, mind and soul will have to rewire.

Relearn how to balance again.

To rewrite my future.

I will need to give it loving care and nourish it once again. For without it I might have been eaten up alive.

Grieving, with broken pieces of what was once whole lie scattered.

Drowning in the depths of a night terror-I see the pieces, yet the smokeless fire distorts my focus.

My body, so exhausted, almost paralyzed to go forth and reclaim them.

The fog takes hold of my vision. Shapes are blurred. The thick air makes it hard to breathe. Consuming my lungs with crippling toxicity.

Oh, how will I survive?

It’s now impossible to gauge my bearings.

Impossible to navigate a path out.

And to be whole again. Impossible.

I am bound by the shackles of your projected self, your lies and deception.

Its weight keeping me down, its coldness preventing any warmth, its restrictions keeping me in a mere static existence rather than living.

Stuck in one spot even though I physically move. Stuck with disillusionment, guilt, hopelessness, shame, regret, pain and failure.

I thought holding on to the idealized version of who I thought you were-the person you portrayed to me-would keep a part of you alive for me.

But holding on for a fictitious person only keeps me in a prison of my own making.

With bars like poison travelling through my veins, eroding my core.

For what I hold onto never truly existed except in my mind.

But if you were only a fragment of my imagination then I am to blame!

Where was my insight?

Where was my knowledge?

Where was my life experience to make me all the wiser?

How was it possible for me to think falling in love with you was wise, safe and good for me?

How do I forgive myself?

For trusting you with my heart, my body and soul.

How do I look at myself in the mirror knowing I made a haunting mistake-allowing so much loss and pain to come my way?

How can I ever be happy with myself again?

Perhaps what I can hold onto is my love.

As the perception of it was real if only to myself.

Yet somehow my usual accolades of vulnerability, authenticity and fearlessness make me feel like the biggest loser out here.

For me there’s no redemption. No take backs.

Just hollow shame