it’s so wild because he actually showed up… and that’s usually the part that confuses you the most.. isn’t it?
he often texted back and he remembered the coffee order, the tea you preferred, little things like that. he was there on the nights he said he’d be there and you looked at all of these things as a form of reliability and you called it love because it was the closest thing you’d ever been handed…
but here’s where things get interesting: consistency is just a pattern and patterns can often run on autopilot. you see… and stay with me here… it doesn’t require feeling, it doesn’t even require you specifically.
he could have been this version of consistent with anyone, the schedule was the point and not the person keeping it…
okay.. lets go further…
you kept defending him with all this damn evidence of showing up…
you think to yourself… he’s always there, he never flakes, he does what he says he’ll do and all of that is so fucking true and none of it was the thing you actually needed… i mean, of course, it’s nice to be sat in a seat where you get to experience these things but it is also important that someone gets to know you and instead of moving in default mode, you also receive an experience that is tailored to some of what you genuinely require… because a person can be present every single day and still never once reach for you…
and you see, that’s the damn cruelty of it! you didn’t get to be the woman who was ignored and could name all the bull shit that begins to cause a wound, you were the woman who was tended to and still starving and that hunger while sitting at a table full of food and minus your favorite meal is a type of silent hell.
you started to wonder if you were the problem, if you were asking for too much, if… maybe this steady, dependable, and emotionally absent thing was just the trade-off for love..
it wasn’t, the consistency without warmth is just a maintenance job and he was keeping you the way you keep a plant alive, just enough water for things not to die, never enough to help cultivate a beautiful and lasting bloom…
and here’s what nobody says…. this is what nobody tells you… yes, you can leave something or someone that isn’t technically doing anything wrong… you are allowed to walk away from the man who does everything right and still makes you feel like a task on his list… “ he was good to me…” and “ he loved me… “ were never the same sentence… please read that again…
and while those two ideas and expressions are not the same, you spent so much of your time trying to make them rhyme!
you didn’t lose love when it ended… you finally stopped confusing being maintained with being wanted, deeply desired, and that’s not a loss, that’s the first honest thing you’ve felt in a long time..
if you're ready to stop starving in full rooms... the woman rebuilding herself
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