I am happy Looking for a good birthday card for a friend And I think maybe I should take up writing them When my eyes find the 'To My Husband on His Birthday' How I loved the first Husband card I got to write And I feel a flash of anger, how even the sight of this card Brings it all up again, but no, it's just a card I might have a husband again, try not to be bitter Let my eyes settle on another one But it's no use I want to cry and scream at the manager now About how not one of these other cards is suitable for My friend, they're all ridiculously awful
So I go on Bottles of wine 'we' used to enjoy How I am boiling with hatred now On a good day I would choose one purposely To re-write another memory over it One that has nothing to do with you I have done this with favorite flowers, cafes, dinners Piece by piece I am erasing your importance Re-claiming the things in my life to their own purpose Without you All the wine is overpriced anyway And so I move on
In the dairy section And there are the special pastry shells Surely you once loved me? The special treats you would make to surprise me? Our marriage was so sweet, as toxic as it was at times I can't believe it. I just can't. How unceremoniously you drop kicked me After the weeks of comforting me And telling me I should trust you Those purely loving moments All along our years What was real? It's none of my business anymore What you believe Or thought of me
And I am trying to put it out of mind I'm learning nothing now But then there you are, the most vivid memory Standing in front of the brussel sprouts Excited like a child over your favorite vegetable I surely loved you.
They say a narcissist adores and loves like a child When was I no longer something you were devoted to? How long were you acting? Certainly the months you came home after separation The year earlier when you let it slip during a fight, "I'm not trying to divorce you just yet" Were you ever mine? Did you know your own mind? The week you were talking to me about marriage And also telling an old girlfriend I wasn't your ex 'yet' How to make sense out of a heart like this I felt so very loved and adored
Your 'yet' finally came Why did it take so long What I now see as inevitable Why did I make so many excuses and try so hard for Security you never gave us
In the checkout line One celebrity with her happy engagement details... And I remember you rolling out of bed proposing in your boxers With no ring It was ok at the time. I was happy to romanticize that even. Another celebrity that was cheated on And I feel the sting of knowing that you were so curious Lusting after others for so long I fight the small, ugly, worthless feeling that gives me I hate that I just snapped at the checkout boy Like he was the idiot
But even the no contact confuses me some days You were everything And now you are nothing to me It is as it should be You would only hurt me again. A man that has a capacity, true ability to love Could not have done what you did I was an object to you And god how you sought to intimidate me I didn't understand it then
I was the woman a fool would have left You saw it and you came home But within a month or two you turned me into A shadow of myself walking on those eggshells I had learned to no longer scream back at the injustices So I shrunk
Yesterday an old friend told me how radiant I looked How she hadn't seen this for months Of course you threw me away, who could blame you It's not like you had insight to think about How your actions and words might have hurt All you saw was a fragile person Who replaced the angry one who could no longer meet your needs No longer the amazing girl you fell in love with Off the pedestal
Was it a long descent I was blinded to? Or was it the short and traumatic bit that left you smirking at me?
Out to the parking lot And I think I see your car I feel sick I can't make sense out of anything that was my life How could I ever look at you again I rehearse the detachment How it doesn't matter, you are just a person I used to know But it is a soccer mom who steps out across the lot
And I drive off wondering Can I avoid you the next time I go through the store? How many times do I need to have this experience To have done with it To find some peace
Mid 30's Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH D 9/15; NC forever on
