she was Bertha Mason but I was never Jane Eyre

The best thing I ever did for myself was finally believe that I deserve someone great. 

I wish I could go back to twenty-two and wrap myself in you, 
tell myself "it's okay,
his shadow isn't going anywhere any time soon,
but it'll be drowned by light before long". 

Truthfully, his heart was always split in two anyways.  
I was sharing him with someone from a past still in the rearview. 
That night he was sitting on our bed, crying into my chest as I stood in front of him,
she was in the mirror behind me, lurking like some Victorian-era apparition. 

How dare you make me seem out of line for feeling like she was lingering. 
With every turn, I found pieces of her everywhere.
The book, the paintings, the bracelet, the corsage you put on her delicate wrist. 
They were like anchors that kept her around long after the waves washed her from shore. 
I fashioned myself an exorcist of sorts, gathering the objects she was bound to by some supernatural force, and destroying them - removing her for good in the process. 
But no amount of cleaning her stuff out ever scrubbed her from your psyche,
and it couldn't save the skin from peeling from my hands, which tried to break down the bars keeping me aside.

That girl locked in the upstairs room didn't think there'd be reprieve.
She thought that eye-rolls, and silent bedtimes after silent dinners, were just intricacies of someone she wasn't evolved enough to understand. 
She assumed that "I don't care if I'm happy, I just want him" was the end of all endings, that it was the apex of love. 
I know now that love isn't happy or him. 
The two are supposed to walk hand-in-hand; but we never did much, did we?
 
I should've known that Love would come along no matter what,
even if it meant a period of intense heartbreak - 
the kind that makes you see spectres on the walls,
swirling around like black ink, staining the surface with all of the words he did and didn't say, like "I don't want to give you false hope" and "I chose you; I love you most."
These days, I see my Love in everything good. 
The poems I wrote for those who didn't deserve them have turned to ash as the ones I write now turn to gold. 
It isn't alchemy, it's destiny come to life. 
Everything that could've kept us apart is exactly what brought us to each other,
sand on opposite ends of the hourglass, falling down until they settle together. 
Reciprocal, in tandem in every way, and I've never questioned it.