Photography by Kourtney Roy

He will never be enough for me; I’ve known this for a while now. I can no longer doubt what I know deep down to be true; that I will never be content with what I have with him. I read a while ago that love is free and natural, that it cannot be reasoned by checklists or lists of requirements; that we don’t know what we want until it is right in front of us. But what is truer is that we know what we don’t want, when we see it. And when I look at him, I cannot imagine a forever. I cannot imagine loving his being fully, openly, completely. He lacks so many of those things that I am searching for. You are probably thinking I am shallow, or my expectations are too high. That if I loved him, I would love his flaws; that it would be enough. But you don’t know him like I do. He isn’t easy to love; I would know, I’ve been doing it for eight years now. It takes everything from me to love him; all my strength, all that is in me and still it’s never enough for him. I am never enough for him. I know he loves me the only way he can, but its not the way I want to be loved. I want to be loved to my very core; deeply, intensely.

I know he is haunted by demons that make it impossible for him to be vulnerable. I know he is terrified of how I make him feel, for he will never let himself feel fully. So here I am, trapped with this man, that yes, I love, once enough, but not anymore. Not enough to watch him look at me with empty eyes, not enough to constantly justify the peculiar way in which he loves me. Not enough to wait until I finally feel like he is fully mine, like how he has always felt that I am fully his. Not enough to keep fighting his demons alone, because he is too stubborn to change. I feel strangled by his presence in my life now, like my love for him is holding me back. Like gravity is pulling at me, constantly drawing me towards him. I am flattened, squeezed and crushed; compressed into a single shapeless singularity. Trapped in a prison of my own making, where time and space are infinite. A black-hole of some sort, complete darkness, where light cannot escape. Infused with the same repetition of mistakes, the same monotonous cycle of pain and forgiveness; the same cataclysmic destruction. And I can’t get out, I can never get out, no matter how hard I try, its force is much greater. I didn’t notice at first, I was so consumed by him and by his darkness.

I was paralysed by my love for him for it was deep, and he was wounded. I took him into my arms and I swear all I wanted was forever. We could still connect then; we would talk about life, death, what came before the big bang, parallel universes and why the earth turned the way it did.

He would speak to me of his past, unearthed and unhindered. He would ask me about my fears and vulnerabilities. About love, religion and the meaning of our existence. Yes true, there was a time, where I felt like he could really see me. But since then, I have been beaten and broken too many times; I have sacrificed so much of myself for him. Of who I want to be to make him see light in the world again. To compensate for all the pain he’s felt in the past. So I loved silently, I did not ask to be loved in return, I did not ask to be taken care of, I did not ask to be held. I just loved, the best way I could love. But our relationship began to gradually disintegrate, slowly we began to drift further and further apart, he could no longer see me. We would talk but never speak any longer; meaningless, tedious conversations that began to weigh on my whole body, suffocating my passion for life and killing my spirit. I felt like all my thoughts, my ideas, my flamboyant whims were imprisoned within me. Nothing about him and I was genuine anymore; we were now are a series of broken kisses, rigid touches both pleading to be felt. Every now and then I would see faint glimmers of hope begging, demanding, that there was still a chance for us. Insisting that we could go back to a time where forever still existed.

But I don’t think I could do it, I don’t think I want to any more. I want someone that will love me the way I want to be loved, that will bring light into my life and make me feel like my world is better because he is in it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. All I want is to feel like I am enough. I do not want to fix, I want to be fixed, I do not want to understand, I want to be understood. And I do not want to fight anymore, I want to be fought for, I need to be fought for. And I know deep inside myself, he will never fight for me, for he does not know how. It terrifies me to think that there is even the slightest chance that he is it for me, that this was the universe’s plan all along, that this is my destiny. That I would spend the rest of my life with someone I am unable to connect with. A cold soulless eternity. I know you are probably thinking that I should’ve figured it out sooner; but I was young and insanely in love with him. I could not see passed him, or his beautiful, beautiful eyes. I was so absolutely certain that I would change him. That once he feels the power of my overwhelming love, he would succumb; that his walls would collapse, explode into a million little pieces; debris and shrapnel everywhere, making them impossible to rebuild. But instead, I was the one who changed. Drained, of everything that once made me who I was. He made me colder, less empathetic, more cynical. He made me resilient, resistant, to love and pain and hurt. And now I find myself, alone, with walls built so high, they are impenetrable. So I wonder, who will come now and break down my walls, who will come now and save me from my apathy?

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Reader submission by Reem Nassar

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