Emotional Cheating?

What hurts, you ask?

...

Somewhere inside, a lost self lingers, waiting,

Exhausted and alone, the battle-weary warrior,

Until yesterday, when I encountered amidst the ash of torched dreams,

in an instant, I realized how distant she had become with the trite words tangled between us,

they think of you often

as though death was upon us.

Is that what hurts?

It was a lie, of course, a platitude aimed to make them feel better for having done that very thing,

It didn’t matter. It never did. It was the fact you thought it should please me, while

Tortured moans grew louder and I scrambled to find that which hides in the dark.

And I listen to the ringing steel of the blades piercing my heart as you demonstrate that you can’t stop…

Talking

About

Her

That hurts.

I took a chance and failed,

And now my dreams have gone into hiding, shamed and ridiculed for existing in the first place.

Words, my companions since childhood, fail me now.

And, yes,

That is part of what hurts.

Trust, I have learned, is not my mortal enemy,

But the inability to know who is worthy,

And shame - a bitter companion - has driven hope into the shadows,

Where it is smothered by the futility of its own existence.

That is what hurts.

I’m closer to the end than the beginning,

And time has run out for another stab at getting it right.

I no longer want to stab at it, get well, or even believe, and ultimately,

That is what hurts.

But I don’t blame you.

You do what you need to do, my love, and

I will continue this journey on my own, knowing that is what I have been doing all along.

And that is what hurts.