I didn’t realize I was in an abusive relationship until I found myself justifying the bruises and the lies. It is an isolating feeling not knowing how to convey your experience to your friends and loved ones when you know you expect more from yourself. The guilt and shame I felt about the abuse kept me silent for a long time. This is my reflection on the experience, this was me healing myself

Bruises (06/2012)

It is not simple to sit here and contemplate the complexities of what once was, now is, and will never be. Betrayed? Hardly, we were not [are not] together. Yet, the heart has always been reserved for you. Not until now am I beginning to accept and realize who you have been all along.

My heart still sings, pains, and cries for you and your return and approval. A smile, a chuckle, and an innocent recollection of tender moments cut deeper into my all ready aching heart. You have divulged the deepest truth of your life, the truths that I always suspected. Such execution (like a butcher hacking away precise pieces of flesh from a corpse leaving a pile of carnage behind- – a trail of the damage inflected by a once so beautiful time), no remorse or reservation as you unlock the chains that have kept a dark truth caged and brewing in the depths of your soul. A well tailored story, created not only to convey a dire situation but also to drive deeper the shards of a broken future further into my heart and wilting soul.

A once vibrant flame became an uncontrollable fire that has charred a once peaceful vineyard, garden, and forest. That was our relationship, so naturally birthed from an innocent love. The flames engulfed our future. It ate away at our love as acid does to flesh. It was fuel to further ignite the inferno. The fire is now cool and the flames flicker. It has been extinguished by a sea of tears. Your behavior became diseased, it manifested into the vile and putrid realities of yearning and fucking. Am I to blame for causing this fire, am I the pyromaniac.

Where does reality end and insanity begin, where does guilt end and responsibility begin?