FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Broken Patterns

---

I stopped writing poetry.

I stopped sketching.

I stopped singing in the shower.

All because of him.

One, two, three - shall I count the rest? Each and every abuse, each injustice that could be okay if on its own but, as a greater whole, builds a terrifying, sickening pattern. Everything comes together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle (how cliché that is) that don't make sense until they are viewed as a whole. The lies, the sleepless nights, the threats, the control - oh, but did I make it up? You fucked with my own sense of reality too, making me doubt the very words that were laid out before me in such black and white ink, as clear as day but muddied by your murky waters, laughing lies.

Think, don't think. What does it matter anyway?

It wasn't a relationship, what we had, but it was something and I don't think I'll ever know what that something was. It's not alright but it's okay. I heard that somewhere. That means something. I'll never know the why of why you did so many things, why you strung the noose around my neck and tightened the rope, knot pressed to the back of my neck. You could have snapped my neck at any time but I was better off hanging there, swinging and struggling, eyes popping, clawing at my throat as that tenaciously tight rope stayed just loose enough to strangle me slowly. It was never intended to be a quick death, after all.

You broke me down and laughed at my failings, got out the camera to record every last sordid moment of my debasement. You told me to grow up. You told me I was weak. You took me I was too sensitive. You said I should just cheer up. You said I was too proud.

You said, you said, you said.

You had a lot to say about me. None of it was true. But I couldn't see that then.

I remember the fairy lights, turning over in bed, hoping that they would be the last thing I would see. Those damn fairy lights. I'd bought them because I thought seeing something bright would make me feel a little better but, well, you can't put a plaster over a stab wound. And the knife was still lodged in me, even then, bleeding out - yet slowly. Always, that was the key to it all, slowly.

I wanted to see them last, the sparkles in the blue and the white, the rest of the room dark. You were only concerned that I was not meeting your needs that night. I just wanted to die. Even now I wonder if it would have been best if I'd just died. Nobody liked me, right? Nobody wanted me around...not even the person who was supposed to be in love with me.

You never loved me. No one who loves another person would ever treat them like that.

Control and lies, abuse and manipulation... No friends, no job, an expectation that I would always be there to meet your needs, always available. Independence? Oh, that makes me laugh but there's no joy in the sound. I was never allowed any fucking independence.

But, of course, I had a choice, didn't I? No one has to stay where they're unhappy so, really, by logical conclusion, this was only something that I brought on myself. I deserved it because I stayed and didn't leave, entirely in control of my own future and destiny.

No. Listen. This is my time to talk. You don't get a say here.

So, why didn't I leave? Why didn't I get away from the beast of the murky abyss that sapped a little more life from me each and every day?

If I left, you said you'd kill yourself. And that's a whole other kettle of fish, blood on my hands that no amount of scrubbing would wash off.

All these broken lies, broken patterns, ways of coping with living that I learned... They don't serve me now and, yet, the memory of it all lingers, seeping into my reality day in and day out. I shouldn't be like this and, still, I blame myself for how I am even as I learn and try and work to be better, to be the person I was meant to be without all of this lurking in the shadows, waiting to snatch at my ankles and send me flying to the floor all over again, rock bottom.

Because it's there. And I can't forget. I can't forget so easily what dominated my life, what shaped five years. I can't forgive and I can't forget but it's time to leave, time to move on, time to let things be as they were. I can't go back and drag myself out of a mess that already happened and what you say now falls on deaf ears.

Love me or hate me. I am me. I am who I am.

Do this, do that, be better, try harder: if I do this, it'll now be for me. I don't have you to please, I don't have you to keep happy. All in all, it would be better if you were fucking miserable as, maybe then, you wouldn't have the strength or energy to sink your fangs, dripping with venom, into anyone else.

But that's a daydream. Just a happy thought. It could happen, one day, but it's not something I'll ever going to have a hand in. Because you're nothing more than a bad memory and a broken pattern to me.

Left, right, up, down. The cheat codes don't work in real life but I'll try them anyway, just to get by, just to scrape on by until the next checkpoint where I can learn a new skill, something to set me up a little better for the week ahead, maybe. Because, if I can get there, I can get to the next one and the next one, getting by and even getting better - but, oh, how these broken patterns still lurk.

This is who I am. I don't have to change that but I might. That's up to me to decide.

Broken patterns can be set to rights. You, however, never will be. And just why is that?

You were the one who was broken all along.