I once wrote these words to my teacher: “I’m addicted to love.”
“No,” she responded, “you’re addicted to pain.”
And now, so clearly, I see it.
I keep making the same choices.
I have a type: the “unavailable jerk.”
He’s not interested in a relationship.
He doesn’t ever text me to say, “How was your day?”
He disappears from my world for hours or days on end, only to reappear when the timing is right for him.
I see it, and yet, I seek it.
“It’s okay for him to treat me this way because he’s busy,” I say.
The low’s they’re low. They make my heart hurt.
I convince myself that I’m okay with it.
But the attention, when I get it, makes my heart do cartwheels in my chest.
The highs are high.
I hang on to the small gestures of sincerity, of caring, and believe that they are enough for me.
I hold out hope that one day, they’ll become his norm.
But I realize now, they aren’t enough for me.
They won’t become his norm.
What I see now, that I didn’t see before, is that I deserve better. I want better.
I am starting to believe that.
I am starting to call myself on my own shitty way of closing my heart off from what it wants and deserves because I’m too scared to open it.
I want a relationship. I want to love and be loved by a man. But when I’m sitting there, staring that possibility in the face, it’s gaze is too strong.
Every first date I go on, I look for the flaws, for the reason I can’t and won’t open my heart: He’s too short. The chemistry just wasn’t there. He came on too strong, too soon.
And so, I run. I run far away from that unknown. I run away from being vulnerable, from opening the fortress gates to my heart.
I run towards the pain.
The pain—it’s comfortable. It’s habit. It’s so damn hard to break.
But it will be broken.
My heart won’t let me deny it anymore.
I can try to reason with it every which way, but my heart won’t lose this fight.
I am making the choice to be vulnerable.
I may be scared when I look a relationship or love in the eye, but I won’t run away.
I choose this.