Three years ago i read an email he had sent to his friend. It read 'It's getting silly cheating on her every week'. It was only 6months later after i read the email from a girl he had met on holiday which said 'i hope you meant all those nice things you said to me' that i confronted him. Of course he said he had never slept with them (i also believed this after he contracted chlamidya at uni...err DUH) which in my naivety made it ok, so i forgave him... yet again.
The thing is, he was my first love. The older boy at school who, at one point, i could only have dreamed of being with. At first it was infatuation. Quite quickly it was love. After love, everything went black and i look back now in disgust and horror at the stranger who i became over those first few years, like a helpless friend wanting to yank someone they love out of drug addiction. I suppose thats what you could call it, an addiction. The craving of something, or someone so badly that it doesn't matter how bad you feel after you have it or what you sacrifice to get it. If only someone had staged an intervention, weaned me off in the early stages, then maybe cold turkey wouldn't be so damn difficult now.
I look back and i see how far i went to mould myself into what he wanted me to be. I would run home before seeing him to change into the clothes i knew he liked, do my hair the way he wanted, do the things that turned him on. It's a wonder i retained enough of 'me' to eventually pull myself out. To turn round and tell him 'this isn't who i am'. But i did, and he liked it. Turns out, while i had been so concerned with changing the superficial aspects of my character, he had fallen in love with the profound aspects of myself, which i suppose i hadn't been cautious enough to conceal. Perhaps i should have used more hairspray.
So then i was just grateful and proud, i suppose. Proud that someone 'like him' could love 'someone like me' (be careful not to adopt labels like this; it is the best way to rapidly depreciate your self-worth). I was so blindly loved up with him that i ignored the random girls who would approach me in clubs and bars around our hometown telling me 'you're too good for him' or even 'you are so much better looking than him'. I refused to believe it, and the more he cheated the more lucky i felt that it was me who he loved. Me who he wanted to be with despite sleeping with all these older, more experienced girls. I look back now and i realise, these girls were probably girls he had slept with or friends of girls he had slept with, too kind to blurt it out bluntly in the girls loos, that the man i loved was a lying, cheating bastard.
I know he loved me. He really did. But what i realise now is that unlike me, he will never love anyone more than he loves himself and for that i am sorry. I am sorry that his new girlfriend is, i'm sure, a lovely girl. Probably full of trust and naivety, unaware of the rotten spoils of human nature. And i am sorry that his hedonistic and destructive approach to happiness will destroy this in her as it did me.
I am left with the scars of my addiction, the track marks of this abuse.
And sadly, like all scars, only time will help them to fade.
The thing is, he was my first love. The older boy at school who, at one point, i could only have dreamed of being with. At first it was infatuation. Quite quickly it was love. After love, everything went black and i look back now in disgust and horror at the stranger who i became over those first few years, like a helpless friend wanting to yank someone they love out of drug addiction. I suppose thats what you could call it, an addiction. The craving of something, or someone so badly that it doesn't matter how bad you feel after you have it or what you sacrifice to get it. If only someone had staged an intervention, weaned me off in the early stages, then maybe cold turkey wouldn't be so damn difficult now.
I look back and i see how far i went to mould myself into what he wanted me to be. I would run home before seeing him to change into the clothes i knew he liked, do my hair the way he wanted, do the things that turned him on. It's a wonder i retained enough of 'me' to eventually pull myself out. To turn round and tell him 'this isn't who i am'. But i did, and he liked it. Turns out, while i had been so concerned with changing the superficial aspects of my character, he had fallen in love with the profound aspects of myself, which i suppose i hadn't been cautious enough to conceal. Perhaps i should have used more hairspray.
So then i was just grateful and proud, i suppose. Proud that someone 'like him' could love 'someone like me' (be careful not to adopt labels like this; it is the best way to rapidly depreciate your self-worth). I was so blindly loved up with him that i ignored the random girls who would approach me in clubs and bars around our hometown telling me 'you're too good for him' or even 'you are so much better looking than him'. I refused to believe it, and the more he cheated the more lucky i felt that it was me who he loved. Me who he wanted to be with despite sleeping with all these older, more experienced girls. I look back now and i realise, these girls were probably girls he had slept with or friends of girls he had slept with, too kind to blurt it out bluntly in the girls loos, that the man i loved was a lying, cheating bastard.
I know he loved me. He really did. But what i realise now is that unlike me, he will never love anyone more than he loves himself and for that i am sorry. I am sorry that his new girlfriend is, i'm sure, a lovely girl. Probably full of trust and naivety, unaware of the rotten spoils of human nature. And i am sorry that his hedonistic and destructive approach to happiness will destroy this in her as it did me.
I am left with the scars of my addiction, the track marks of this abuse.
And sadly, like all scars, only time will help them to fade.
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