Another Nail, Please

"How DO you feel then?"
"Like.... like I want to disappear."
Eyes cast down, defeated.
"That's how children feel."

Intimacy is a strange thing.
Something like a twin to comfort.
I hammered a nail back into my window this week by sleeping with him three times.
It's a personal detail but a little confession here and there does the soul good.
By all means I'm attracted to him, the lines of muscle and hands, lips, and eyes that know me.
Mine know him.
It was comfort, though. I knew it instantly.
When you take something that has been in your life that long and you remove it, it's like some aspect of your fibers revolt.
He has a way with words, how they slip out through teeth and settle somewhere in your mind like a bomb.
I'm easily manipulated, especially when seeing the suffering of another.

I wanted to disappear.
There's no getting out and no going back in.
Hope. I had hope I could open this window.
I did, and I cried.
He called and said he was changing his number.
Then he brought me a shadow box picture he frame he made with small pieces of a love smoldering to ashes.
He said he was going to Denver.
I held on to my resolve and he left.
Freedom and captivity could be twins too, if the cage is big enough.

His eyes were blood shot, holding his stomach, about to vomit.
"Just take the dogs. Don't call anyone."
He had swallowed a bag of a concoction of medicine he had made and had intended to go peacefully.
Not as long as I was there.
I made him throw up. I yelled. I told him he was acting like a child.
Acting in crisis suits me.
When it's not mine.
Then, doing what I do best, I cooked him some chicken and corn on the cob and forced him to eat before going for a beer at my friends.
Text messages apologizing, adorizing, mind fucking.
I was afraid he would die in his sleep so I stayed over, not before he conned another time of sleeping with me out of the mix.
I felt no emotion.
In fact, I was so hurt by his behavior that I made sure I conditioned myself to be unhappy and not want it and begin to get rid of the love and care and let the anger seep between my cracking emotional foundation.
Crazy. That's what all this is.

Yesterday he came to my work bringing flowers and a Propel to drink.
I said I would stop by after work.
It's amazing to me, every time, how comfort and the fear of freedom bring you back over and over again.
One of my dermal has been working to the surface and so I trusted him to let him cut it out.
So sweet, gently using the razor blade to cut the skin that grows through the jewelry holes.
Tenderly he did it even.

Then I lied about going to L's brother's with him.
I'm in love with L and can't scrape off Tony. .I don't understand it and I can't understand myself or trace my behavior backwards.
I just know that L is healthy for me and loves unconditionally.
The cycle Tony has me in isn't.
There had to be some spot reserved in hell for people like me, emotional soul suckers.
Insecure little girls that can't do the right thing, tearing pieces of the hearts of others to repair the holes in theirs.
He went to my dad's and saw I wasn't there.
He saw I parked my car around back at mom's.
I pride myself on my honesty, except with Tony.
It hasn't been a relationship that facilitates it.
Four and a half years of unhealthiness.
On a good day I find myself ugly, but with him, I've seen my utmost capacity for ugliness.
Believe me, you can stretch further than you think.

He never had a Facebook until now.
Today, actually.
Said he called my mom to see if I'm talking my family things and involving them in my lies.
Told her he was sorry for some things and for some things he's done to me.
He said he's going to beat up L or go and talk to him.
Single or trying, he forbade me from seeing him.
Says people can watch what I'm doing since we live in a small city.
I feel a little bit nervous and I feel very trapped in these emotions.
I never knew that day when we met that we would be where we are now or that I was involved with someone like this.
I never knew I would become a serial cheater (not sleeping with them, flirting/kissing), say the things I've said, demand the things I have.
I never knew and God, I'm so sorry.

Friends say that he's done things to me too much but I'm me and I can only be the best me I can.
I need to have good character and I haven't.
I feel so ugly.
I feel so trapped.
I don't understand why some of me wants to stay and most wants to go.
I just try to ask forgiveness for my daily mess ups and revolt against this ugly inside.
I want to throw out this bucket of nails.