The relationship I share with one of my favorite people on the planet has become excruciatingly rocky. With desperate desire to work on things, I have begun to accept the fact that the damage may be irreversible. The present situation urgently needs to change for the sake of our health and our happiness, be it together or apart.

While on Twitter the other day, I came across this tweet that resonated with my present state. Fortunately, I've never experienced any of the exact scenarios described, but have been witness to and lived through changes in dynamic just as devastating.

In order to love others better, I must first improve my own love of self, as I cannot fill another's cup if mine is empty. New beginnings don't have to be happy to be beautiful. There's beauty in sadness as well.

-ff

"It's not that I don't love you. It's the sound I heard when I was 9 and my father slammed the door so hard behind him I swear to God it shook the whole house. For the next 3 years, I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died. I think he took her heart with him when he walked out. Her chest is empty, just a shattered mess of cracked ribs and depression pills.

"It's not that I don't love you. It's all the blood in the sink. It's the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn't love her anymore. It's the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood.
So much blood.

"It's not that I don't love you. It's the time that I had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fucked his ex. I swear to God she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away.

"It's not that I don't love you. It's the six weeks we had a substitute in English because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn't handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling. But her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. And sometimes when things break, you can't fix them. Nothing ever goes back to how it was. I got an A in English that year. I think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays.

"It's not that I don't love you.

It's that I do."