25 + years.
Lies.
Manipulation.
Abuse.
I took it all in, and tried to be better for you. It's what you said I needed to do. It was never enough. I was never enough.
It's been 27 days since the direct abuse stopped. Every day, things get a little clearer. This time I'm in charge of the silent treatment.
My efforts weren't the problem. Your ego was.
I started planning for our marriage to be over the day I tried to commit suicide and you were off doing coke with your friends and talking to some other female. I was so pissed. Not at you. But at myself because I didn't die that day. I was so disappointed that I had failed at yet another thing that would have made you happy.
But fuck you. I didn't die that day because that's the day I started living for myself. That's the day I realized that all the years of believing that you were my savior and that you'd always have my back were a big, fat, fucking lie. I was nothing more than someone who would always owe you something. That's not love. That's ownership. Like a car you put time and money into, you expected me to perform to your standards. You forced me to leave my standards behind, to live a life of constant lies and betrayal and abuse.
Every time I fought back, you broke me down a little more. Every time I begged you just to love ME, you lied and said you did. But the unrealistic expectations never stopped. I told you over and over, I'll never be who you want me to be.
I used to think that made me less than you. I used to believe that I wasn't good enough for you. But that's not the case at all. The reason there was so much strife was because the little girl who learned to fight against the abuse as a child was in there screaming to keep me going. She reminded me often that just because I didn't meet your standards didn't mean I had no value. It meant that YOU didn't value me.
That's no longer my problem. I don't need your false validation. I don't owe you a fucking thing. You've taken plenty already.
I value me. My friends value me.
I will come out ahead. Not ahead of you, because I don't really care to compete with your grandiose sense of self any longer. But I'll come out ahead of where I was yesterday. And tomorrow, I'll be even better.
So you take your drugs, your lies, your slander, your flat out fucking weirdness, and find a new piece of property because I'm not it.
Fuck. You.
