One day, you’re a child who believes in finding your Prince Charming, and the next, the world comes crashing down on your head, showing you that none of it was anything more than an illusion. You start to realize that the world is made up of people who live to manipulate you, distort everything you believe in, and even hurt you on purpose because they have to be okay, never you. When that reality comes knocking on your door, something changes. A switch flips, and the world begins to lose its color. But then the universe sends you someone who promises to be different this time, someone who will finally treat you the way you always dreamed of being treated, and once again, the sky comes crashing down around you. Your feelings no longer exist. Now you live on autopilot, always waiting for that person to become who they were in the beginning again, but that is clearly impossible. How can someone who pretended to be someone else just to charm you ever go back to being themselves when, deep down, they never even existed? How can I keep expecting someone to treat me the way I deserve when I don’t even know how I want to be treated? Are my principles really mine, or are they just collections of things I picked up from the people around me? Do I really know who I am, or am I just living on autopilot? Deep down, do I know who I want to be, or do I only know who everyone else wants me to be?
There are so many questions circling in my head that, in the end, I lose myself in them. Yesterday, I read a book about how we, as women, are always waiting for a man, whether he is good for us or not, we are always waiting for him. An ex-boyfriend, a friend, someone you saw on the street, or someone you’re interested in — it doesn’t matter who he is, but rather how he affects our day-to-day lives. It made me think about how many decisions I’ve made wondering how a specific person would react. When was the last time I bought an outfit thinking about how I would feel in it, instead of how that person would feel about it? Why show so much intensity if you don’t want to live a future with me? In the end, once again, my mind spins around questions I don’t even know if I want the answers to. How am I ever going to explain to my children that, once upon a time, I suffered over someone who wasn’t even their father?
Why do I spend so much energy on such cruel questions, the kind that take me back to my most raw and primitive self, the one who will always be needy for attention and affection? Deep down, I don’t want to be like that, but at the same time, I don’t know who I am. So how can I know that I don’t want to be like that? I have so many doubts about myself and so much pain that I never understood where it came from that sometimes ignoring it makes more sense. I don’t understand how someone who can solve everything and is always so practical can still manage to get lost in herself.
Sometimes the pain comes at night, before I go to sleep. Not the kind of pain that makes you want to cry or ruins your day, but the kind that leaves you confused, as if someone had slapped you so hard that everything around you is buzzing, and all you can do is sit there and wait for it to pass. Nothing more than that. I can’t understand when things started falling apart, when exactly everything changed, when one simple decision set so many others in motion. When did I open Pandora’s box?
How did I let one specific person affect me so much, and what will my reaction be from now on? The next time I meet someone, will I allow myself to live as intensely as I did this time, or will I keep myself from throwing myself into life? Deep down, people tend to let their selfish nature win, and when they see the damage they’ve caused around them, they would rather smile than change what is inside them. Falling in love with one of those people will always be the greatest ruin someone can bring upon themselves. In the end, love is about sharing with another person, but if you’re the only one taking part in that exchange, you return to the world without pieces of yourself. You left everything with someone who never deserved it. Now that I’m left without pieces, how am I supposed to share them with the next person? Or rather, do I even try to share myself again? Do I try to mend what’s left, or do I simply accept what remains?, in the end, Jão was right when he asked, “What does love become when it comes to an end?” Because now, looking back, all I see are memories that hurt and pieces I wish were still with me. But what I was left with were ruined pieces and a bottle of glue. All I wanted was not to glue those ruins back onto my soul, but I see no way out. After all, my best pieces were left with the wrong person while I was certain it would be forever.
To no One,
Cora Vesper.