The Monsters

We talked about the future. I suppose, it was never really our future, it just was just the future. A future I never really bought into - not fully. I had always wanted you, more than I wanted it. I wanted the present, the you and me, the safety of things being ok, now. That was the problem really, the present was easy, the present was you and me, nothing else. But when we talked future, that's when the panic started, that slight quickening of the pulse, that tightening of the chest. 

I had always believed, or hoped maybe, that it was about the past, not the future. That I was marked. That my scars prevented me from seeing a time when I wouldn't be scarred anymore. I wanted so desperately for that feeling to go away. I wanted to believe, as you did, that we would be perfect, or at least our version of perfect. It was your version though and I suppose, by the end, I felt that it was your version of me. The version of me that had been broken, but would be fixed. Or was fixed? Maybe you thought I was better. Maybe I was, maybe I was better, maybe six years of therapy, the loss, the self discovery, the career, the relationships, maybe they were better. But still, the idea of better was predicated on the idea that I had ever been broken. 

I was never broken. Hurt, yes. Hurting, yes. Sad, yes. Lost, yes. Depressed, yes. Lacking, yes. But broken? No. Never broken. My past was there, yes, sometimes it was right in front of us. Sometimes the past flared between us like a fire; threatening to burn us both, to engulf us and our relationship. I had a fire blanket though, I always had a method to extinguish it. I would highlight it. I have always been self aware, too much so maybe. 

My self awareness was my shield. Yes I was commitment phobic. Yes I had Daddy issues, intimacy issues, family issues, love issues, self worth issues. Issues with a capital I. When they came between us I would say "Those are just my issues". I would take ownership, I would say this is my wrong, this is my fault, this is me. When I said it, when I said these things I detracted from the us. The issues with us. I threw such a big spotlight on me that I threw everything else in the shadows. 

The shadows were where the monsters were though. The monsters that were us. Our monsters. They were part you, part me, but they were all us. Our monsters. Never mine. Never truly yours. They were ours to fight, together. I can't take all the blame, but I can take a large porportion of it. Self awareness. I was so self aware I never thought outside of myself. I never thought about us, or you. I just thought about me. What was wrong with me. What I needed to fix, what I needed to change, what I needed to be aware of. 

It's the funny thing about shadows and monsters, you can ignore them all you want, but at the end of the day, they're still always there. Waiting. It's just you make a choice, to not see them, to ignore them. Or sometimes, sometimes you shine a light so far into one corner that you forget about all the other corners. 

The monsters. Always there. Waiting. Ready. In the end, we turned our heads so far we didn't see them sneaking up behind us.