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I used to Love You

A meditation on love, heartbreak, and self-worth

By Miles Rafael Bairley-UjuetaPublished 3 years ago 26 min read
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“I love you Mihret.” This I said while I stared softly across the bed, whose covers had been overturned in passion, whose milky white was illuminated brightly by wisping tendrils of light which crept nostalgically through the window. She stared back upon me, a dreamy mist obscuring her eyes. “I love you too, Miles.” God how I had prayed for those words. I wanted her indescribably, for every time I had her it seemed she slipped just a step further away.

“I know you’re going to leave me someday,” said I knowingly. “But I’m just so glad I’m with you now, this one moment makes everything worth it.” The sky huddled darkly against itself in anticipation of my pain. All the older beings of my realm watched in silent terror, and nostalgic bliss. “Everything,” I repeated, realizing that I was wrong. She smiled back at me; not a loving smile, but a cold, heartless smile; the smile of a person who has had so much taken away, that any new attachment is nothing but grief wearing a hidden face. She saw into me; into my blood, and my shifting devils. Into my angels, and my warmest memories. And most of all she saw what was lost; what I had discarded and thrown away. And she knew intrinsically, how precious that boy had been. The one who I had drowned with my own hands.

Ah, she mourned for that boy, perhaps it had been him who she fell in love with, neither of us was sure. I can scarcely picture the light in that room, though I can feel it on my skin as if it washed over me even now. It was light, as light is meant to be; the subtle afterglow of the beyond. It was the light which entered my windows in elementary school, the one that bathed everything I saw in color as a little boy. The one we can never remember, for it was more than feeling. It was time and place, which transcends time and place. Those days I spent with her, those countless mornings I arrived bright and early with her $1.00 chocolate donut. Those days when her mother let me in with a smirk spread across her face, led me sweetly through those old church doors. And the birds chirped sharply in the dew soaked air, and Manhattan came alive with a soul of steel and grandeur. Those mornings still exist somewhere, far from the grasp of time, and they haunt me still from that stupid realm. They haunt with their quietude, their softness; their raw, luminescent, sensuous flesh. It was as if I stumbled upon a palace of the divine, where the ripest fruits grew, and the sweetest nectar poured in waterfalls from henges of water lilies. And most of all I picture her faceless contours. Sometimes her eyes escape me, while other times they enrapture me with longing. It’s as if I hid her face in a drawer, deep in a bureaucratic, dull office in the annals of my mind. Yet every day I search for it, and eventually I find it. I remember what it was like to wait outside that tired vestibule; to feel soft wind against my skin, and wait while sunlight enshrouded me in her loving fingertips. I would ponder the fate of our love, understanding truly, how fickle it was. Would it still exist if I did not imagine it to? Had she ever imagined it? And I thought again, of my own being. I felt sure that I deserved even less. I believed her trickster words. I believed that I wanted to learn Arabic for the same reason I watched hijabi porn. I believed that I was on Instagram, only to turn women into pictures; silent caricatures of people they had never been, curvaceous and lacking in substance. I believed that I betrayed my ancestors with my very existence, as this is how she made me feel. Every second spent outside of her arms was torment, for those moments forced me to see myself, as she instructed me to be seen. And this man was unbearable to everyone but her thighs. I could not bear to be him, to be weighed down with a burden to draw Atlas’s pity. Yet I imagine this is how she lived her life; in constant betrayal of what she was meant to be. In ceaseless rejection of that perfect light which shone on her soul as a little girl. Light whose sun was so far away.

You must hear it in my words. Yes, I cannot help but empathize with her. With that beautiful girl, who must be a woman now. For to be frank with you, I have never loved anyone more. She was the ocean to me; deep and divine; cold, dark and blue. Lifeless, and infinitely fertile. She was the sun; lifegiving and cruel, solar and radiant; bronze and luminescent as the looming of the end of times. She was the windy sky, the luscious grass, and the foam upon the surf of the sea to me, in those nostalgic days. I did not want anything from her but love. Not a thing, not a change, nor a simple movement in any direction. I wanted to watch her grow yes, but to tell the truth, I did not care what sort of tree she became. Whether she would shelter a forest, or wilt a sacred grove beneath her avarice did not matter to me. Only that she would reach her destiny somehow, and I would be there to see. Perhaps this is why she could not love me. How can you love someone who demands so little from you, when the world demands so much? To me this was true love, to her this was inauthenticity. But do not let my compassion for this melliferous girl blind you to her true nature. Ah, to children she may have been a wonder, to her friends a careful shoulder, and to those who desired her from the edge of hallways a voluptuous angel. But to me she was a demon. And I’ve always found demons to be irresistibly sexy.

Why was she a demon? It was not because her soul had been corrupted long ago, not because her skin was scaled, charred, or wrinkled, or even because she schemed to bring angels down. She was the sort of demon angels followed willingly, in the name of piety, and the hopes of their own salvation. That is what was cruel about her. Her awful power, and her complete refusal to check it. How many times did she lock me out of that house just so she could let me back in? She would refuse me the bathroom, she would run her eyes over every inch of my privacy; and yet when I asked for a morsel of the same, suddenly I was the one who was in the wrong; who was overstepping my bounds and her holy boundaries. Boundaries? What boundaries? It was as if she was a plant cell, and I an animal one. And she penetrated me viciously with her own wall, as if it were the sharpest sword. She tore me apart, like I was a child’s doll, just so she could weave me again with her own hand. She dumped me every week, like I was the past night’s trash, and then she came, collected, and recycled me again. Once, she choked me out in a deserted hallway. I had begged her to take me back as I always did. What had I done then? Who can remember? I wonder if even she could, for it had never mattered. Had I allowed my longstanding female friend to hug me? As Mihret often let her friends of various genders do. Had I flirted subtly in a cryptic innuendo to my science partner? A second’s long flirtation which I covered up later, because I was so terrified of the flack it would bring from my beloved. Or perhaps, had I watched porn again, after promising I was done forever, and confessed to this on a cloudy evening with restless tears in my eyes. Like I’ve said, it didn’t matter. Sure, Mihret was beyond guilty of all these crimes. Every brief respite in our relationship was a commodity she traded like the rarest gold, bartering with her countless admirers for admiration, empty self-gratification, and an endless folder of back up plans. She used me to build her up, then once she was built she walked out into the world, batting her eyes on those who adored her, and basking in her melliferous glory. Perhaps I would have done the same to me. It is these thoughts which harangue me so. Every girl I was with up until her I used. Sure I’m not a rapist, sure I’m not a batterer, sure I’m a feminist in many women’s eyes, whatever that means. But I used them. I poured their energies, their lavish desires, and their attraction into me and sucked them dry. I would have taken more if they had let me; back in those days, of course I would have. I was an energy vampire. My tongue had no loyalty to my heart; my soul kept no counsel with my penis. Romance felt so scarce, whenever it arrived before me I scavenged it like a carcass, sucking the marrow out like nectar from theoretical bones. Would I lead one girl on? Two, three? For me it was the same number, and I had never loved them, even those I had the possibility to love, for I stifled that love within myself before it had the chance to be born. But when I met Mihret? Ah, she was like anointed rain falling upon the savannah after the driest of seasons. Like a monsoon of hope in an endless storm of meaningless rain. I had devoted myself in those past years to such pitiful gods, surely she was magnificent enough to receive my worship. My endless love, my servile tongue, and my hands which kneaded her succulent flesh like it was clay. So when those delicate fingers wrapped themselves quickly around my throat, arresting my tempered body, which was much stronger overall than her own; why didn’t I struggle? Why didn’t I push her off me violently, ring a palm across her face, spit on her and curse her in preservation’s name? I knew she did this in anger. Perhaps in rage, lust, and aimless agitation at the same time. Why didn’t I stop her? Instead I strangled myself with her beautiful hands. I drowned the man I was becoming once more, remorselessly. “Stop her!” he cried out to me, like I was some heroic savior. “Stop her from doing this to me! Stop her from dashing all of our pride against jagged rocks of dismissal; from violating this body given to us by the mother goddess herself! This body you’ve always hoped would be beautiful, as it is today.”

“Shut up,” I said to him. “Our beauty exists for her only, for no one else has ever appreciated it as she has. You’re a man aren’t you? Yet her hands are wrapped around your neck, and you go limp like a helpless child. Stop pretending you don’t want this. Stop pretending you’re not doing it to yourself. How utterly pitiful. Is this not better, than your aunt’s wrinkled hands creeping upon your thigh? Is this not more loving, than the brutal fists of boys who broke you long ago, because of the confusion you stirred in them? Learn to like it Miles, and stop bothering me so. I will die for her if need be.”

Yes this is what I said to myself, and it makes me cry even now. For I did not want her to choke me out, so cruelly, with lust so tainted by her own scars. I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to apologize and tell me that I deserved better, that I always had, from her and from the world we shared. But I didn’t think she would ever say these things. So I thought instead: Isn’t it better that she touch me in anger, than cast me away?

Oh, the tears stream down my face as I pour these words onto the page. Thank god they’ve come, after waiting for so long.

I had a dream last night, a nightmare really. I dreamt a dream, and when I woke up from it, a woman was at my door; a friend of my mother I think she was. And she told me that she had dreamt a vision of my doom. She said that doom had come to me, inevitably, in the shape of a woman’s body. A beautiful shape, a gingerbread skinned woman, with a heartless smile. And I was so terrified of that clairvoyant woman, for I had just seen the same dream. A dream I had dreamt countless times. For I am haunted by my promises to her. Like chains they sink upon my feet, and drag me into lucid depths. I told her I would love her forever. That I was born to love her, and without her love I would wither and die, and live on only in the hopes of finding her once more. And for a long year I kept that promise. Yes, I withered and wilted beneath the warmth of the sun. Love turned to empty darkness, ripe vegetation to ash, and the air became a blanket of stifling, humid severity. I wanted to die; no, I promised that I would. But things changed. I did not fall in love with another woman, but a man instead. Miles is his name. That same boy who stole her heart stole mine as well. And I opened doors to him, that I swore would be closed forever. And I told him things, that this girl would never know. This betrayal coiled like a fervent serpent around me, pinching against my lungs, and steaming insults at my gut. Yes, she had already betrayed me. But did that really matter? For I did not betray her now, with my cascading new romance; rather I betrayed my word. I betrayed the authenticity of our relationship, that authenticity which I wrestled for with her in the mud. How many times had she told me that my love was a lie? That my promises were empty, my words illusory and ephemeral, and my musings fickle and immature? She was dismissive of my love, I believe, because she was guilty of how coarsely she deceived it. She could not bear to crush a heart who loved her purely. So she attacked the purity of my love, my lust, and my desire, claiming that it was rooted exclusively in soulless places. Yet I, the place from which the love sprang, knew inherently that it was composed of soul and nothing else. So I fought against her, in an endless quest to convince her of my worth, and of hers as well. But if she admitted the wrongs she rained down upon me, ah, then she would have to admit those abuses she heaped upon herself. She would have to admit that in my words of love, I had never told a single lie. That we had in fact shared gentle, precious moments beneath that cherry tree in Central Park. That when we had held hands by those windswept West Side waters, passion had in fact bloomed amidst us. That when we stared mischievously into each other’s eyes from across the stained table of that Brooklyn diner, vulnerability had sat at that table as well, chittering into us, like some formless child. And when we had fucked each other relentlessly, and stained her sheets with lust, it had truly been love that we were making. If she admitted that to herself, then how could she justify throwing it away so carelessly? Even though she wanted to, needed to for every other abuse to make sense. Perhaps all this is wishful thinking on my part, but I was there too, when she said these precious, delicate things to me. She was not manipulating only one person in those moments, rather I think she was manipulating two. She used me to produce that sensuous vulnerable feeling which she desired so, and when it became too overbearing, she cast me back into the waves, and waited for them to wash me upon her shore once again. And of course I arrived just in time, for to me she was the ocean surf, the agrestal swells, and the distant moon which pulled at them all in one, and I wanted nothing more but to be caught in her unnatural cycle.

But let me tell you again why this angel was such a demon. Because she saw so deeply into my character. My traumas flashed sightlessly before her eyes, like a million flittering minnows. My adventures spoke to her, and the poetry of my words sang. She kissed my body like it was made of sugar, and stared upon my face on cloudless days, like it was a face she had always known. She told me sacred histories, and whispered to me of faraway lands. I watched through her words as she sprouted from a seed in Ethiopia’s soil, and how she grew amidst a vast field of similar plants, which murmured to her lovingly, and sang songs of her ancestors in a velvet tongue she could never fully forget. Her mother, the one who birthed her, was a distant memory; a face she could faintly illustrate in her deepest dreams, yet was lost to her waking world. And she told me of that vast root system which swaddled and cradled her. Those million roots from which sprouted a timeless jungle, and entire realm unto itself, of spirits and human memories. A realm which was the past embodied, and the future as well, somehow. And she told me how she was plucked from this root system, whose magnificence even the sky envied; for freedom is so far from belonging. But she was plucked from it, and planted in a ceramic prison far away. No longer could she touch those roots which had borne her, and feel their energy coursing through her valued soul. No longer did the birds know her name, the monkeys frolic beside her, and the wind speak to her like an old friend. Her kin did not jostle with her any longer, so she was free to grow without competition. To soak up as much sun as the clouds allowed her, to drink water endlessly, as if it flowed from a saltless sea. Oh, she bloomed under the sun; her flowers ravishing the eyes with fluorescent exuberance. But where was her father to stare upon her with proud eyes? Who else existed amidst that ceramic pot for her to shadow but herself? Now you can see why I gave my heart this girl can’t you? This girl who had her entire world taken away from her. And what had I ever had to take? I was not born amidst a vast root system, but rather in a carefully manicured garden. I could not remember anything but the mother who had borne me and she, had been born inside a garden as well. My people had been in ceramic pots for so long, we no longer dreamt of forests. We thought that forests brought nothing but shadows. Oh, but we forgot what roots were. Yet this girl remembered, and she did not let herself forget. It would have been easier to; to tell herself that she had never known a world outside that small ceramic pot. That this secular, soulless thing was in fact her destiny. But to lose what one has lost, is to lose it truly for the first time. So yes, I respected her rage, even when it bared its fangs in my own direction. Yes, I was guilty too, of the crime which had fallen upon her. We all were; each and every one of us that grew contentedly in that insidious garden, with all its straight lines, pesticides, and ceramic fortresses. I wanted her pain somehow to be avenged. In some way, on some thing. Didn’t she deserve that? Didn’t she deserve so much more?

Of course she did. So now you are wondering at me; why have I referred to this beautiful creature as a demon? Why have I colored her with so dark a word? I’m sure amidst this orgasmic prose you are finding her appealing and voluptuous in character as well, and are falling in love at least mildly, with my idea of who she was. Of course I will never know the world which turned beneath those brown eyes. That world she adored, which fate stole so cruelly away. Even amidst my imagination that world is beyond comprehension in its resplendent bioluminescent majesty. If you are upset with me, then you should know what demons truly are. Dreams deferred. Longing’s so pure, so righteous, that in their passion they attack righteousness itself, for allowing fate to run her evil course. I hope that this woman is no longer a demon. That she has redeemed herself day by day, and devoted her life to wondrous, awe-inspiring things. But what about me? What about that boy who I drowned so carelessly? Whose dreams I stifled with nightmares, whose visions I dismissed as ravings, whose prophecies I discarded as lunacies? What of him, and his dreams? What of his longings, which began in such pure, righteous stances? I deserved more than that suffocating garden. I deserved an aunt who didn’t molest me to satisfy her urges. I deserved a school which protected me from the violence of my peers. I deserved a state which did not rest its head upon my humiliation, and a people who did not pretend that I was invisible. You see, we all deserve more from this world. Yet this girl told me that I did not. She scarred me, and convinced me that the scars had been there the whole time. In fact, she convinced me that I had inflicted them myself. Perhaps I had, perhaps I did. Yet I deserved more from my girlfriend, a girl who I devoted myself so completely to. I was her shoulder to cry on, the one who picked her up when she fall, carried her things when she was tired, and brought her sumptuous food while reminding her to eat it. I would skip lunch so I could take her out to dinner. I would cancel plans at the first sign of her anguish, just so I could rush to her side, listen to her woes, and do all the things she asked me silently to do. I befriended her dog, I befriended her mom, and I came to know her house like the back of my hand. I even tolerated towards the end of the relationship, her sexual, torrid affair with another boy, which she described to me in detail every day for the next week. Even though we had been each other's first. Even though I had wanted my skin to belong to her forever. Even though I had zero desire to give myself to anyone else. Even though hearing her pronounce those words was like stabbing a stake into the nexus of my honor, pride, and devotion. Because this girl meant so much to me.

And how did she dismiss me that final time? This boy, this budding man who had given her everything she asked but solitude? “Did you ever really love me?” I asked her. She stared coolly at me, like a full moon stares upon a sunless sea. “No,” she said, almost shrugging her shoulders. And then I walked away, and we never spoke face to face again. And did she ever apologize after that for hitting me a few times in irritation, and justifying it because it had been so few times? Or for punishing me again and again as a cheater, even though I never cheated, and she had done so much more and demanded it be forgiven? Did she give back all the love which she had sucked from me like I was a straw, drawing strength from it in her difficult times, and leaving me to wallow like a husk? We all know the answer to that question. And what of her friends? Whom she confided deeply in, like they were bathtubs waiting to be filled with secrets. Did they come to me like men are told to do and say, “I’m so sorry for how she treated you.” Or, “She was wrong to say those things to you. You deserve better, Miles.” You know that they didn’t. No, they stared quietly at me from across hallways, and they watched me wander that lonesome school surrounded by people, without ever offering me a word. Just a word, would have made me feel like I wasn’t crazy. Like it wasn’t all in my head. Like it hadn’t all been fault, as she told me countless times that it was.

Well, last night I dreamed that she killed me. She interrupted all my grand, ambitious plans and took vengeance for all those broken promises. I don’t believe this girl of the flesh truly would, believe me. Yet the version of her which exists within my mind is incalculably cruel. For the worst of that girl has fused inwardly with the worst of me. And together, across seas, they conspire to drag me into the catacombs of guilt. Perhaps I should stop wallowing. No, rather, I know I must. But first I needed to tell my story as it truly was, so it does not devour me ceaselessly from that prison called my heart. Once she messaged me out of the blue, right before I was to board my plane for India, and called me a rapist. What a joke. I know men are not supposed to dismiss these things so carelessly, but let me tell you why I do. Because if I were the woman and she the man, that girl would not be allowed to contact me after the hell she put me through. Physical abuse, verbal abuse, mental abuse. She speaks of rape, as if I did not treat her body as a temple. I did not break consent with her. I did not force myself upon her ever, or turn a deaf ear to her words, or taps, or even gentle sighs. I made love to that girl like she was a goddess, and I obeyed our safe words, even when she would cast them aside. Neither one of us was raped, but she violated me. She violated my heart and soul, my trust and my devotion; and she did not ask if she could, because she already knew the answer. It had always been a yes, for I wanted her to treat me in this way, and she did. But the word, rapist. Such a powerful word. A word which in a single thrust, can dismantle every vestige and shred of credibility one has, without any context or investigation. And that was something that she knew. Knew horribly well, which is why she threw it at me in a last ditch effort to justify her terrible actions. But we both know that I am not a rapist. You are the only one who must now be suspicious, seeing it emblazoned on the page, and rightfully so. Even I question myself viciously because of such an accusation, turning it over a million times in my head. Am I truly sure that I never crossed her boundaries? Maybe there was something, that she was afraid to say. Maybe I did do something, which she never mentioned before, something horrible enough to justify all her subsequent abuses. Should I allow these worries to devour me until the end of time? Well?

Decide for yourself what is the ethical choice. I for one, know that I will not. A couple months ago she messaged me again. This time there was no mention of rape, or any similar atrocity. She mentioned friendship as a possibility, perhaps to be polite. I recounted all the things she put me through, subtly demanding some sort of apology, or acknowledgement. Like a ray of sunshine on a sunless planet the acknowledgment came, thundering against my heart with the indomitable might of tidal wave. “I’m really sorry,” she said. She apologized many times throughout our relationship, but had not done so for over a year at the time, probably longer. I didn’t know what to do. What to think or feel or say. So I blocked her, and deleted every record of her number, email, or Instagram, so I could not find it again in desperate times. She will never know how much she hurt me, but perhaps now, she can imagine. As I imagined her pain in all those long months which I devoted utterly to her. Ten in total. But who’s counting?

Where does this story end? With the beginning of my life I think, an event I have procrastinated for so long while holding on to this one. I have not allowed myself to move on, in the foolish, romantic hope that I wouldn’t have to. Yet now, I see that nostalgic paradise was always a mirage. For what paradise is not one? I am releasing this to the world for my own sake. I am making a selfish, self-aggrandizing, stereotypically effeminate choice in doing so. And I don’t care. I deserve to be freed of this. But I will not forget Mihret’s pain, as she tried to forget mine. I will be better than her. Better than she chose to be. I refuse to die in this stupid, stifling garden. I refuse to accept this secular ceramic prison as my destiny. Was I born to be a demon or an angel? I’ll let god decide that, after I’ve had my fun. I will grow my own forest, and be buried amidst her roots. I will feed life, and let strength be drawn from my existence. Men like me, deserve to be seen, listened to, and perhaps even cried over. I am not sorry for the life that I’ve lived. I do not regret the gifts I gifted, which languished amidst other’s hearts. For in truth, all those gifts were meant for me. Perhaps I am finally ready to meet my second love. One who will show me what it means for passion to be reciprocated. Or perhaps love will always remain my mistress, and I will be married to duty, purpose, and the surging grandeur of destiny. For Miles’s sake, I wish for both, for he deserves both of these things equally, and is finally ready to welcome them. Goodbye Mihret, beautiful girl who I pined so long for. Former goddess of my stars, and moon of my tides. It seems I’ve finally outgrown you. You never deserved these lips, and you will never will again.

breakups
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Miles Rafael Bairley-Ujueta

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