New Horizons

It's crazy, because two weeks ago, I would have told you I was happy. Two weeks ago, I thought I was.
I wasn't. As much as it pains me to say this, I must say it: I was miserable. I was crying myself to sleep a couple of nights a week. Two weeks ago, Michael and I were getting into fights everyday. Two weeks ago I still had vivid thoughts of killing myself. I felt sick with worry, sick with guilt, sick with inadequacy, sick with betrayal, sick with pain, sick with fears of so many things, mainly of loss.
It's just now that I see I lost myself. I was so caught up in what things should have been like, that I completely overlooked Reality. But who wants to admit Reality when She is standing there with a 45 in your face? She has already beaten you down to a pulp, stabbed you in the back numerous times, and made you feel like shit- completely worthless. And I... I was sitting in the corner of the room, lost in my own little world with my delusions of optimism and grandeur. I was convinced that it had to get better soon. Reality owed me that. I deserved it, damnit, and I wasn't letting go until I had it in my fucking grasp.
What I didn't see was that it took me letting go, the very thing I refused to do, in order to get over that next barrier.
So yes. Michael and I broke up. Do you think I blew it out of proportion? I'm not done yet.
I haven't begun to explain how I loved him so much I overlooked my needs. I haven't yet begun to explain the way he made me feel, which, I think, might have been what I loved the most. For there were good times where I felt like I would never be happier. But shadows of the past and strained minds and starved hearts can obliterate anything, any happiness at all.
And don't think I didn't hate myself. I did. For the first 48 hours I thought I was making the biggest mistake. I thought that it was wrong, all wrong, and we were taking the easy way out. But the easy way was letting ourselves believe in the fairy-tale ending when there was a good chance we would self-destruct long before we ever reached it. Our relationship was like a drug, it kept feeding us and feeding us, sating our need for companionship, for passion, for love, while constantly destroying us more and more violently the longer we indulged.
I love Michael, but our relationship was a poison, and one I had gladly taken, thinking that maybe the next time it would magically turn into a cure, or maybe the next time, or the next, or the time after that. I didn't want the poison: I wanted the cure. "The hand that hurts can also heal" and all that.
I'm free now: free to live with the guilt that maybe if I had tried harder, been better, prettier, smarter, etc. Free to live with a heart that has been broken yet again. Free to live with another set of shattered, unfulfilled dreams.
And yet, I'm also free to move on. Those bruises, scrapes, and cuts that darkened my heart, mind, and soul are no longer being reopened, and relived everyday- they have the chance to heal. Maybe one day I'll be whole, or at least close enough to be content.