"Go back until you do not want to anymore."
Those words echoed in my skull like a warning I refused to hear. A prophecy I kept rewriting with my own tears. And so when he came back, asking me to be his better half, I walked straight into the fire believing it was warmth. Fooled was I. A cross I willingly carried in the confusion and disillusion of yearning to belong to someone. Anyone. To him.
He looked straight into my eyes with a sincerity that tasted like poison and honey. Words dripped from his mouth that made me question my sanity and mistake longing for love. Why was this relationship already so hard, so heavy, so suffocating, before it even finished beginning?
I remember grinding my hips against his growing erection, searching for meaning in a body that never offered me safety. Losing myself in the heat of a moment that felt like an apology I was manufacturing for him. My pride scattered on the floor like shattered glass. My dignity leaking out of me like water poured through cupped hands. And the question God whispered to me was sharp and sobering.
"Is this what I chose for you?"
I looked at him and felt a grief that tasted like surrender. I whispered, "Lord have mercy, but I love this man." A confession. A plea. A desperation.
And yet, this man.
This same man once said to me with a voice cold enough to freeze blood, "Come get your things. We are done."
He broke up with me like I was furniture. Like I was an inconvenience. Like I was something he could discard without blinking.
Tears streamed down my face as I begged. I begged to fix us. I begged to make it right. I begged for a place in a heart that was never built to hold me.
And he said,
"I never loved you the way you think I did."
A knife. A truth. A punishment.
I collapsed inward.
No scream came out.
Only a silence so loud it felt like spiritual death.
Still, I kept choosing him like an altar I was sacrificing myself on. The devil I convinced myself was an angel because he smiled at me when no one else did. The comfort I mistook for home because loneliness carved holes in me too deep to patch.
I kept returning to the fire even though the burns were already visible. I kept forgiving wounds he never apologized for. I kept hoping for softness in a heart that had none. I kept choosing pain because I convinced myself pain was better than being alone.
God asked me again.
But softer this time.
"Is this what you think you deserve?"
I had no answer.
Only a heart that throbbed with the truth I tried to avoid.
Only a soul tired of holding onto a man who let go first.
Only a girl who mistook longing for destiny.
I kept going back until I couldn't anymore.
Until my spirit sank deeper than my knees.
Until my tears tasted like the end.
Until I finally understood that choosing him meant abandoning myself.
He was the devil I chose.
And I chose him until the fire burned all the illusions away.
In the quiet after the storm, when the dust finally settled, I closed my eyes and whispered my last prayer.
"God, can you please help me unlove this man?"