Until You (prose)

Love to me has never felt real. Rather a lie that is told to keep someone alive. Every marriage I’ve ever known has started or ended in disaster. Married due to pregnancy. Children tossed aside. Children given up. Children used as an attempt to save a marriage. Messy divorces. Arguments between parents. Cheating partners. Words thrown like bullets, aiming to maim. Affairs. Lies of “I love you” when with someone else. Messy fights. Arrests. An afternoon in the police department. Lies. Excuses. Keeping someone around to get what they want, to get out of a sticky situation they put themselves in. Living out of someone else’s house. Fear. Of getting to know someone but the next minute they’re gone. Of opening up just for the world to crumble. Again and again. Saying goodbye. To words left unreturned. Custody hearings. Lies told to children to make them feel unloved. Unwanted. To the point when even if love was shown, I never believed it. I questioned its motive. I denied its existence. Even though I craved it. No love between siblings, just anger and loneliness. No way to love someone if you’ve never been shown how. Questioning my worthiness, my purpose, my point. My existence.

Until you.