Am I cutting away pieces of myself so that I fit better with you? With your image of me? Am I consuming myself in order to be loved by you? In any relationship there will be a certain amount of sacrifice, even friendships. But why do I feel like I’m standing here misshapen, bleeding from wounds where I’ve torn away pieces of myself that didn’t fit. And you stand. Untouched. Whole as the day you stepped into this world.
I love you. Or I think I do. I think I know what love is but I feel so lost. So like a child, stumbling with scraped knees, feeling broken and injured. But I love you. When you smile and your eyes crinkle my heart swells, when your eyelashes catch the light the way they do I find myself wanting to kiss you until we both die.
But that’s just the problem isn’t it.
I want to kiss you. I want to embrace you, hold you tightly to me, knot my fingers in your soft hair and wrap my legs around your waist. But you don’t.
You won’t hold me anymore.
I see you every day. I breathe the same air as you. I brush against you, and eat with you, and listen to you snore as you fall asleep before me. And I do so filled to the brim with the urge to express my love for you and enjoy you in a most intimate way.
But I can’t. Because you don’t want that.
And I don’t want to pressure you into intimacy, what I want is a celebration, a joyous amorous entwine, a consentual collaboration of desire. But as time goes on my now swollen, bloated, feelings of love, adoration and desire begin to rot and sour. I begin to grow resentful, and hateful, and neglected.
I feel like you don’t love me at all.
Because you won’t touch me. You won’t even let me lean on your shoulder when we sit on the couch, or kiss me hello or goodbye. You won’t touch me of your own free will at all. No little subconscious contact because you want to be closer to me. And when I move my feet so that they touch yours because any small bit of contact would be so, so nice…. you move your feet away, your body tenses, you seem so uncomfortable.
Because I touched you.
Because I touched you, you recoil as if having been touched by an unpleasant pest.
I know I should be more understanding, or patient, and maybe I should just be more self sufficient.
But to be bound to a man who starves you of affection and intimacy while still expecting companionship. Who wants the freedom to have complete privacy and bristles at any personal inquiry, while making the same inquiries to you later. Who wants you to be forthcoming about your self and your thoughts but doesn’t share their own and has “high expectations” for his partners.
Is fucking painful.
I hurt.
I hurt every damn day I’m with you because every minute with you is another minute I feel like you don’t love me, or want me, or care. At all.
Because my insecure, immature self wonders if you’re cheating on me more often than is healthy. Because I wonder if you think I’m not good enough. Because I wonder if you think I’m fat, or lazy, or stupid, or boring, or disgusting, or any number of other things…
I wonder if we just don’t work. If we’re just not compatible. If I’m a square peg, and you’re the round hole.
But I hope not.
Because I want to find happiness with you.
Because I’ve already found so much happiness with you.
Because you’re beautiful, you take my breath away, you’re funny and silly; you make my heart beat so fast when you smile, and when you do the sweet things you sometimes do my heart feels like it’ll burst…
Until it hurts.
I’m a little tired. Of feeling so unloved.
Extraordinarily Ordinary 