Monsters

Honestly I do not know why I get a bit sad when I see things or when I notice that something is different that wasn't.  Especially when I should not be looking for things in the first place.  So seeing that a picture which once existed does no longer should not cause me to laugh in a self-depreciating manner.  Because a) I should not be even seeing things like that, my own curiosity be fucking damned, and more importantly b) I should not give two flying fucks.

Sometimes I go through these modes where I really think about exactly how unimportant I was and am and allow those thoughts to sit in my head and simmer.  Most of the time, my doing that just leads to me being angry with myself.  How could I have not seen the truth?  Why am I still affected?  Why was I nothing in the end?  Whys and hows and shoulds are all part of my daily mental vocabulary, and try as I might to snuff them out, they just continue to return over and over and over again.

Every time I tell myself that I think I am okay and I think I am doing better, it only takes a few stray thoughts for that to collapse.

Really, sadness isn't even the thing that returns most of the time.  It is...that feeling of emptiness.  That hollow feeling that nothing can satisfy, and for me the only thing that comes close is being with Callie and doing things with her and the other furry creatures in my house.  Dogs, especially, I see as pure.  Loyal and trustworthy, more so than probably any other human I could possibly meet.  And perhaps that is why I am much more comfortable around dogs and animals than humans lately.  They have no agenda, no capacity to trick me into believing that I am loved and special when I am not.  They cannot say the words "I love you" and "I want to be with only you forever," while knowing that the truth is far from that.  In a way, I find I understand dogs better than I do people.

Callie won't lie to me because she can't.

People I cannot understand.  I cannot understand anything the ex did or has done, and I spiraled into some level of insanity while trying to figure it out.  Humans are illogical, and I cannot grasp their intentions or their actions.  If I love a dog and treat her kindly and show her how much she means to me, while also training her mind and body, she responds with affection in turn.  She stays by my side, and would protect me if I was in danger.  She would comfort me when I am sad, and want to play.  In a way, she would (and does) love me in return, or at least what I as a human perceives as love.  But humans are different.  They do not always return the same love, and that is okay given that feelings are not always reciprocated.  But they lie.  They lie again and again and again for their own purposes, trampling on those they claim to care about and love.  If I was loved even as half as much as he said, none of what transpired between us would have happened.

I wasn't loved.  And I often hate myself for not realizing it sooner.

In a way, I fear humanity more than I ever did before falling in love.  Because I realized the extent of humanity's ability to betray, to be selfish, to deceive.  Here was a person who told me repeatedly how much he loved me; how I was his favourite, and how he felt so lucky to be with me.  How he always spoke the truth.  (Funnily, right then I should have realized something was up, because only pathological liars insist that they tell the truth 100% of the time.)  Yet none of that was close to being true.  It really wasn't.

There are several people I have spoken to who have insisted to me that my ex is not the monster I pin him as.  Truthfully, I do go back and forth on that notion, mostly out of a selfish desire to have not been so royally incorrect in judging a person.  I don't want to have been in love with a monster.  But he basically taught me that humanity is full of monsters, and there are more of them than I ever thought.  Hell, I too am probably a monster, though I like to think I am not.  But I am; I have done terrible things and have said awful comments all out of a selfish desire to save my own feelings, which could not be rescued anyway.  He, however, became the scariest demon of all, since he presented himself as such a wonderful and loving person.

I see him as a monster because to me, that is what he truly is.  He lied to me.  He used me.  He abandoned me.  He betrayed me.  He destroyed me.  How could I see him as anything other than a monster?  I don't want him to be.  I never really did.  Constantly I told myself that he was not.  He was just sad, and lonely, and I messed everything up and could have done more.  I defended him to friends and family, and excused his lies and his hurtful actions because he was "trying to find himself" or something equally idiotic.  I clung foolishly to hopes that he would turn around and be the person he was; the person I had loved.  But that person was a farce anyway, and it took too much time for me to figure that out.  I should have realized that once he accused me of having too high expectations of him, when all I ever wanted was for him to be a decent human being.

He is the monster who shattered everything I was.  My independence crashed.  My faith in humanity destroyed.  Any small bits of confidence I had in myself were snuffed out.  I questioned my sanity.  My desire to live suffered, and fear was the main thing that clung me to this world for a long time.

My ability to trust and love...practically nonexistent now.

My ex...my monster, so to say, haunts me.  Not necessarily because of him as a person, I suppose.  But for all that which he did and all that he represents to me now.  All those terrible things that I have come to believe and feel, unable to truly escape the pit that he helped dig for me.

Part of me thinks that I'll never actually get out.

I feel so little, still.

In that way, I suppose I too am now a monster.