I never knew who I loved; he was the perfect stranger to me that felt like home. To be so deeply, truly, and unfathomably enamored with someone the way I was with him. It's easy to look back and see I was tangled into the web, but god, when I was in it, all I felt was him. 

Everything was complex, and he prided himself on being a man of few words. But I felt the change in his movements, his touch, his breath, his gaze. He was never the same after the first, and with each new betrayal, the sting of a mutation grew, rugged and raw, and tore through every part of what made me whole. 

I felt it before I knew, but I could never rationalize what I'd hoped was just fear. He'd lie and tell me it was paranoia and insecurity, and it became ingrained in me. But still, I remember questioning the glisten in his eyes when he would tell me he loved me. Wholly, unconditionally, and then leave to fuck someone else. Refused to kiss me in front of his friends, but let the latest conquest grope him in front of me after denying tooth and nail. Having every one of his female friends block me because of what I might say to jeopardize his “reputation”,  jeopardize the string of lies and manipulation he had been carefully threading through each of us to feed exactly what he needed, the ego boost.

The kind of insanity that I dug myself into while trying to discern what I knew from what I felt. What I saw from what he told me. I've never felt more out of body than those moments. To look back and connect everything, all the dots, and be able to tell myself “it wasn't you” isn't as healing as I wish it was. I wish I would've left. I wish I never would have called him for help when i was drowning in the weight of his betrayal. Even when I'd found proof I couldn't hide from, for some unfathomable reason, I still promised myself it would be okay. If we pushed it under the rug, eventually I'd feel okay enough to breathe. Breathe without him.

Love and loathing, never have I felt such a multifaceted range of a singular emotion. The only person who id thought made me feel whole, tore me apart completely, left me a shell of second-guessing, asking for reassurance, and shuddering at the touch of my own skin. But oh, how I loved him, how I needed him, how I couldn't recover from this utter and complete betrayal without the one who claimed guilty on the stand. 

I couldn't let him touch me for the longest time, I couldn't look at him without seeing flashes of my worst fears in front of my eyes, and to close them only invited the nightmares to become real. Every “I love you” felt like an “im sorry” was tacked onto the end, although almost never uttered in actuality. And nobody could know that was most important. He worried so deeply about people finding out what he had done, I wasn't allowed to talk about it, even to him. But at that point, the disdain for myself was so strong I did everything in my power to hide it, and hide us from the people who already knew. I couldn't let them catch on to the fact that I was too weak to leave.

That was when I spent all my time thinking about them, each and every one. How did she move? Speak? Smell? Was she soft? Was she flexible? Was she better? I couldn't form a thought that wasn't a comparison or curiosity about them, shuffling through each like files in a cabinet I kept right in the front of my brain for months. Every time his skin touched mine, I wondered if he was thinking of one of them. If I saw his eyes close, I'd worry he was looking through his own file cabinet, thinking of the same things I did. And I felt sick, but I never stopped. I wanted him to want me, so I hoped it was in my head, and hoped he loved me enough to be the only one on his mind. 

After a while,  we both had each other convinced. It was so deeply ingrained in us, this confining, breathless, unyielding codependency. He thought he needed me to forgive himself, and I thought I needed him to move on. We used the same hands that made tender imprints to tear each other open and watch the blood be shared. I said I forgave him, but I could never forget, and he could never change who he was. 

We stayed together for almost a year after, moved in together, became intertwined in every facet. Some things got better, most never did. We were in love, it was beautiful, and it was mundane, and awe inspiring, and the fucking worst. And then one night, he left while I was asleep. I still wonder if it was all a nightmare.