The cycle that never changed

I woke up thinking it's going to be another dreaded day. My eyes were already puffy, they felt swollen from crying through the night. My mind felt foggy and I barely slept. My stomach felt like there was a pit in it, I felt empty and hoping everything had just been a dream.

I lay there motionless, staring at the ceiling, wondering how much longer could I carry this heavy weight on my chest. I used to wake up every morning thinking this time it would be different, we will have a good day today. I would hope and pray so hard every morning that things would be different. Yet every day felt the same. You were predictable at best.

The anxiety had already settled in. What would we fight about today?

Would it be religion? Would it be the way everyone and everything else always seemed to come before me? Would it be the girls your eyes kept wandering to whenever we were out, or the girls you refused to unfollow? Would it be the drugs you took to help escape your own life? What next?

It felt as though a heavy dark cloud followed me everywhere just waiting to pour. The world around me had lost its colour, everything grey. I often questioned if this is what love was supposed to feel like. If it was then, would it truly be worth anyone’s time.

Today was supposed to be special. It was our two-year anniversary.

I had spent weeks hoping everything would go right considering how things between us felt so wrong for so long. I just wanted one day that belonged to us, one day unspoiled by disappointment.

But you were late.

As always.

I had begged you a thousand times before to just show up on time, just this once. Yet I sat on the bed, watching the minutes pass, feeling that familiar ache of being an afterthought.

When you finally arrived, you gave me a gift.

It was your usual strategy to guilt me into forgiving your lack of presence.

I didn't say anything.

I was too tired.

Too disappointed. I hate being right sometimes.

Looking back, I think that moment was a breaking point for me, it was in that moment the dark cloud started to drizzle, or maybe it was just another sign from the divine. The truth was that I had received plenty of signs before. I simply chose not to trust them. I chose to trust you instead of me.

Eventually, I told you how disappointed I was. How much it hurts.

You started crying.

I tried to comfort you, even though I was the one who had been hurt. Somehow that always happens. Somehow my pain became yours, and my role became fixing it.

But instead of accepting the comfort, you began screaming.

You pushed me away.

And once again, I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know how to act. I didn't know who I was supposed to be. Was I supposed to be angry or was I supposed to be understanding? I felt so conflicted in that moment. My head and my heart were not aligned.

I realised that day, I was trapped in a cycle of waiting, waiting for you to change and become the man I always wanted you to be. In hindsight, maybe that wasn't fair on you. I couldn't force you to become someone you weren't. The truth was that I had fallen in love with your potential. I had fallen in love with the version of you that only existed in my head, I kept making excuses for your behavior.

I spent years chasing the kind of love people make movies about and yearning for the love that you read about in books. I kept calling it love, but most of what I felt was pain. I had tried leaving more times than I could count. Every time, you promised things would be different. Every time, you swore you would change. And every time, things would change for about a week. Maybe even two if your family wasn't around. Then the weight of old habits would drag us back down again. The cycle repeated itself so often that it became familiar, it became expected. A rollercoaster I hated but kept climbing back onto, hoping the next ride wouldn't be as scary, yet it always was.

You always found a way to make it up to me afterward. You really did try but what was the point of making up for something that never needed to happen in the first place?

That morning, we went ahead with our anniversary plans or at least, your version of them. You took me to the place I told you I didn't want to go to a few weeks ago. Again, my feelings had been ignored and again, you had no plan or even thought about what we were going to do that day even though I had asked you to plan it since the year before was also ruined.

I broke down crying in the car.

And you started screaming.

I begged you to stop.

You didn't.

Instead, you pressed harder on the accelerator.

You swore at me and started jerking the steering wheel, braking abruptly, speeding down the highway.

I prayed.

I cried.

I pleaded with you to stop.

But you didn't.

The panic consumed me. My body trembled. My chest tightened until I could barely breathe.

You often told me I wasn't the kind of woman you wanted to marry because I wasn’t of the same faith.

Then, in the same breath, you would tell me there was no one else like me.

So, I spent two years trying to become your type.

I sacrificed parts of who I was. I thought I would eventually become someone worth choosing, someone who was enough for you and maybe somehow, we would be happy but the more I tried the less you did and I realised I couldn't sacrifice the very core of my being for someone who only offered the bare minimum in return.

Still, the cycle never seemed to end.

No matter how many times I cut the strings connecting us, they somehow reconnected themselves back together. What good was distance when you were etched into my brain?

Sometimes I wondered if there was something wrong with me.

Maybe I enjoyed suffering.

Maybe I was addicted to trying to fix things that couldn't be fixed.

Or maybe I was still trying to rewrite something from my childhood, something that taught me that love and pain were the same. Those are the thoughts that followed me everywhere.

The next morning, I opened my eyes.

They were puffy again.

Some people are afraid of the monsters hiding under their bed, but mine slept right beside me.