shooting star

Sometimes I have to ask myself if I’m responsible for all of it. If I hadn’t wished on a glimmering shooting star, on top of the pool house roof on that picturesque July night, would it have ended there? Would he have moved to a big house in Tinley Park with his family, sending me back to my cramped bedroom on the West Side?

I’ve always said that it was his fault that we got together in the first place. He asked me to go out the first time, he introduced me as his girlfriend to his family on Thanksgiving, and he asked me to move in. But really, it was my fault that things went on so long. I prayed for him to stay, I hoped and pleaded for divine intervention to step in, to prove that we truly were meant to be. I took it as a sign of fate when I got that text from his brother saying that they were staying.

I was so good at making him the villain. Even now, his memory is entwined with feelings of disgust, hatred, and spite. Thorns on the roses he gave me. I no longer can recognize love in what I used to feel for him. Love is now associated with reciprocity, tenderness, and unquestionable commitment. It used to only know a home in fear, anxiety, and estrangement.

Instead of a clean break, we put ourselves through the kind of misery that can make even the next love, no matter how pure, feel like a facade for a time.

So what would people think if I told them how hard I tried to get us to work despite it all? How I sacrificed every part of myself to prove that I was worthy, that I was the one who’d love him more than any other, if he’d just love me back sometimes. I’ve been scared in the past that it would say more about me than it would of him, that it would seem that all of my stories of his mistreatment weren’t real, but rather a way to slander his name as petty revenge. Of course, no one has ever come close to insinuating this, and I know that none of the abuse was my fault. But god…I wish I’d have let that star pass without asking anything of it.