It all comes down to that Rammstein song.
“Du hast” (you have) or “Du hasst” (you hate)
I am not that girl. Never have been.
It would be easier I suppose to hate the ones who left, or who wronged me in some way.
But then do I not invite hatred for my mistakes too?
Are we not all human and fallible?
We are.
Do unto others…
Did I not once hold love in my heart for them?
Ich tat. Ich mache.
I did. I do.
Conjugating verbs and conjugal visits.
I am a builder and maintainer of bridges, I rarely burn them down.
Don’t play the blame game either. Gets you nowhere really.
I’m going to sound like a hypocrite for a minute here.
I am a writer, I write primarily about relationships and love and all that jazz. My experiences end up here. So, by rights, I do technically use heartbreak to feed my work. But, when I am responsible for the leaving (and I have been) I own it.
1000 word apologies and explanations. I stand up to take the abuse I feel I deserve because I know what it’s like to be left and doing that to someone else is far worse to me than carrying the burden of being discarded.
That? That I have a handle on.
It breaks my heart harder to break others.
I would rather be a marionette than a puppet master.
“Do what thou wilt and that shall be the whole of the law.” Aleister Crowley
Stay if you want to, roam if you want to. No strings attached. I am here if you want me, but I won’t force you to stay or make a fuss if you leave.
“I love something about everyone I have ever been with. Sometimes it’s the fact that they are a 1000 miles away, but I really do love that about them.”
I wrote that.
The ones I wouldn’t spare a drop of piss for if I found them on fire in an alley…ya, they exist. But I don’t care. I don’t think about them at all really, until it comes time to write an article like this one. I do rather enjoy the fact that they are so far back in my past that most of my cells have regenerated to the point where technically…scientifically, they never touched me. So that’s nice.
The last one that left me did so with a clean, sharp cut. That was nice too. No kicking or screaming, no name calling or cajoling. He simply stated he was ‘over it’ and behaved accordingly, by being over it and leaving me alone. We both said our piece and counted to three. “He’s bonafide, what are you?” (Oh Brother Where Art Thou)
Ya, it stung and hurt a bit but he was so adult about it. It was a kindness really.
I have a metric shit tonne of respect for him because of it. That, to me, is what a good man looks like, how one behaves. No mudslinging, no bullshit just “we’re done here”.
And although I care about him and found myself missing him it was substantially less painful than the bulk of the other break ups I’ve been through. The difference between a surgeon’s scalpel and a rusty saw when removing a limb I suppose. We survive, we heal and yes there is always the occasional itch where the appendage used to be, but the healing time is vastly different when the severing is done with precision and care rather than a rousing chorus of “I hate you, you did this, how could you blah blah fucking blah”.
Especially when the bitchy party is the one holding the knife/rusty saw.
Seriously? You don’t get to do that.
You cannot break up with someone and continue to dictate their behavior. It doesn’t work that way.
You can’t hate someone for doing what you told them to do, which is ‘go away.’
Ex hubby loved to pull that shit, and my strings. I didn’t realize for a long time that I was the one holding the scissors. Snip snip buh-bye now.
The opposite of love is truly indifference.
Anything else makes you look like a toddler in a sandbox who saw another kid playing with a discarded puppet and suddenly wants it back.
Grow up already.
Finally, an option to comment. All i want to say is thanks again for writing all this down and sharing it with us. It’s a true joy to read and i learn things from every article. About myself. About people. Thanks.