Today I realized that I have been prostrating myself to grief in hopes of some form of redemption. But taking all of the blame is what I am use to doing, even when I am not at fault. And in this case, I am only at fault of falling in love with a person who is bitter against the world. That bitterness turned him into a cruel person who took that cruelty out on me. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to believe it.

When I asked for space to figure out what decision I wanted to make for my life, he didn’t honor that. He took it in hate and turned his bitterness toward me. Instead of giving him hope, it gave him an excuse to shut me out. He didn’t care about me, he didn’t have the empathy to put himself in my shoes. He didn’t trust me. He only cared about himself.

When I spent months reassuring him of my decisions and my reasonings, when I spent months giving transparency to him, and fighting against his shutting down. He didn’t care. He only cared about himself in a hateful way. He couldn’t see that someone could love him and do what is best for him. And that’s what I was doing. Changing my circumstances for myself so I could be the person that could freely love him. He didn’t care to wait, he didn’t care about anything I said. Nothing I did or said mattered to him. He only cared about himself.

In six months, he never once communicated with me about anything, not his thoughts, not his feelings, not his fears, not his accomplishments. Nothing. He didn’t care about anyone else…except himself. I can’t read minds, I can’t fix what I didn’t know was broken.

When I flew 3100 miles across the country to spend time with him, he only cared about himself. He never once made eye contact with me and flinched at my touch. He treated me as someone who wasn’t a someone. He treated me less than human. When I called him out, he didn’t care about me or my feelings or how his actions were hurting me. He only cared about himself. There was no consoling for me, which even the meager of friends could accomplish with a simple hug and a “I hear you”.

When I had the worst day of my adult life – my mom’s death anniversary, my period, a week’s worth of being ignored by someone I loved and cared about, having the flu, just got out of the hospital, all at once. In my darkest day, he didn’t care. He saw all of the signs of me being in pain. He saw my behavior change. He didn’t care. He left me for all of his selfish reasons. He only cared about himself that day. And I had no one to talk to, except for the vodka bottle that sat across from me.

When I reached out to him afterwards, he didn’t care that I was sad. He only cared about himself. He left me without a single word for months, after lying to me, telling me he loved me as his last words. When he finally got around to remembering that I even existed, it was only to block me out of his life completely, without a single word or reason. Once again, on top of every other time, he only cared about himself.

As someone who has lived a lifetime of cruelty masked as love, I fell victim to it once again. I thought he was someone capable of love, I thought he was capable of empathy. But in cold hard painful truth, I fell in love with yet another person who is only capable of cruelty. I’ve been blaming myself for over six months for everything. But it really isn’t me. I keep trying to rationalize everything in my head. But nothing adds up…and I count myself as someone who is fairly self-aware of my own actions, especially when those actions do not line up with the person that I want to be.

It doesn’t add up because I keep factoring myself as the problem. I am not the problem. I would never abandon anyone. I would never leave someone in pain. I would never block someone out of my life without a single word. That behavior causes the worst forms of irreversible psychological damage to a human being. And it sucks that it’s been done to me and I’ve been damaged beyond repair from it all. But at least I am not void of empathy. At least I am not void of love for others, and I am not even really void of love for myself. He is, though. His family, the bullies, and his ex turned his bitterness into a destroying hate. It makes me so sad and it hurts my heart. And the day I saw his friends stare at me with hate in their eyes, I realized that his cruelty came from more than just within.

I am struggling with all of these broken pieces that he left me with. Daily I say, “I forgive you and I forgive myself”, but nightly, I am plagued by nightmares, night sweats, crying, and anger, and I say, “How can I forgive you!? I HATE you for your cruelty, I HATE you for believing that I am less than human, and I HATE you for making me believe that I AM less than human”. My stepdad made me less than human for over 10 years of my life. It’s a place, that once you’re put there, it’s hard to remember who you are and how to get out. I am struggling to get out. Every now and then, like right now, I remember who I am as a person, and I remember who I want to be for this world. And I remember that I am human and deserve to be treated as a human, with even the smallest ounce of dignity. But in a few hours from now? Something may trigger me to forget, and I will find myself staring at the ground when I walk, hiding away from everyone, flinching like an abused dog, and crying over my own inadequacies, asking myself why am I still alive, do I even deserve to be here breathing other people’s air?

It breaks my heart that someone I admired so much was a fake and filled my head with fake things. I know that he wishes he was that good and kind, loving person, and that is what breaks my heart. Until he can be brave enough to stop running away from his problems and everyone, he will always be stuck in an apathetic and cruel, bitter form, never realizing that the problem isn’t everyone else. It’s him.