You silenced me with a threat and I gave in to it.
I was knee deep in a trauma response to the third miscarriage in less than a year.
Instead of comfort you delivered fear. How disgusting of you.
Afterwards, I walked on egg shells day after day.
I believed you when You called this love because I needed something outside of myself to believe in.
As time progressed, my heart began to heal and things between us returned to our normal but it wasn’t long before a new cycle was to begin.
I allowed my ex to hurt my children once again because you didn’t believe he was the monster of my claims.
Why were you with me if you didn’t believe me?
Is the response I should have given.
But instead I live with the regret of their preventable tears.
You then dragged me into your traumatic past and then lashed out with another ultimatum when you got triggered.
You then had the audacity to blame me for it.
I started to give in to your ultimatum but I had to know what happened if Instead I said no.
I got my answer.
It wasn’t love.
It wasn’t kind.
It was the shattering of disillusionment.
You were a figment of my imagination masquerading as love but actually just another representative of the trauma bond cycle I grew up inside, married into and finally, thanks to You, escaped.
Now, the only ultimatum that I live with is that I am no longer tolerant of those who choose to abuse me, rage against me, threaten me with violence, dowse me with lies, control me with manipulation and reject me with projection.
Everyone can come at me right or stay the fuck away.
I finally rose from those ashes where you left me but this time I didn’t rebuild myself to live out the same trauma bond cycles.
Instead, I found a new way to exist in a space called self-love.
I gave everything to myself that I wasted on you and others before.
Everything you rejected allowed me to heal, thrive and find peace when I gave it to myself.
I would have emptied myself to fill you up but I realize now when I pour into myself, I no longer feel compelled to abuse myself like that just because it’s what abusers expect me to do.
~the poet Z
24 October 2021
