None Of It Cures You

She just sat there. If you looked close enough, you could tell she was shivering. I didn’t dare ask her why I simply said “it doesn’t feel like it, but it’ll get better.” She looked at me, tears starting to form. “You know, they all say that”.. she trailed off as her voice cracked and shattered into a million pieces. The tears started streaming and I knew I had to somehow make her see it. “Let me guess .. he left?” She grabbed a cigarette and just stared at it. “I see a bruise. Can I assume?” She sighed, lit the cigarette and barely whispered “I told him I didn’t love him anymore.” I grabbed a cigarette and savored the taste before responding. “You never loved him” and plowing past the protest in her eyes I continued “you said yes because it was easy. It was easy to see yourself with him, to live with him, to let him in. But then it got hard and you didn’t know how to leave. You let him lie to you, you yelled but let him back in your bed, you let him raise a hand to you. You let him get away with calling you a bad name every time he got drunk and mad. You let him make you feel like less than.” She looked offended, I knew she wasn’t getting it. “We let them break us then beg the, to fix us.. that isn’t how it fucking works”. She took a long drag, loooked at me and said “I thought that was how it worked.” I cracked a smile.

“Darling, they want us to think that’s how it is. Hell, I let a man call me an idiot, hit me, touch me when I said no.. I let him call me a whore and throw things at me. I let him come back 100 times. I let him convince me I was in the wrong. But then, I had to let that go. I had to let him go or it was literally about to kill me.” She grinned, flicked her cigarette and said “the day he left, I screamed so hard I thought I broke a rib, my mom couldn’t understand a single word when I called her, my roommates gave me a bottle and I tossed it back. I thought I could fill the wounds. But I didn’t realize that I had to admit it was my fault.” I gave her a puzzled look.. “I didn’t say it was your fault. I just said we allowed it.” She smiled again and said “I let him stay. I should’ve told him to go fuck himself the second he made me question myself. I should’ve run a long time ago but I didn’t, and now I’m smoking a pack a day and drinking my weight in whiskey. I’m telling my therapist that I’m fine and waking up in a new bed every weekend. My friends asked if I was okay and I took a shot. This is me now, I guess.” She sighed again and I could tell she wasn’t done. “I jut don’t get why they can do this to us and frolick away while we sit here and suffer.”

“Fuck dude.” I sighed. “We let these men break us and break us for years then we ask why we are fucked up.” We laughed and laughed and laughed. It felt good, to smoke, laugh and tell someone else it would be okay. Because the truth was, I didn’t know if it would be. We constantly fill the holes until one day, we just crack. We keep cracking and breaking and screaming. Nothing heals us. Therapy, liquor, sex.. none of it cures you.