And I don't think abusers understand
That if they were to lock every window and barricade every door
Block every entrance and exit
Destroy every possible path of communication
Delete every outstretched hand so that I never see those who have tried to reach towards me,
This is not enough
to win me for yourself.
Were you the last person on Earth,
Were you the last Being in the universe,
this is not enough to endear you to me.
You project yourself and your sensibilities onto me.
I am not as desperate as you
I would not accept any and every connection for the lack thereof
I actually care about compatibility
I am not like a mindless faucet
If you destroy every cup in the house
This does not mean that I must, surely, and at last, pour my attention and my love into your mug.
I have sentience
and self-respect.
I respect the love that I have to give.
And I know that you have dishonored and betrayed that love greatly and repeatedly, with great cruelty and dismissal in your heart.
I know this enough, that, should I finally be so alienated by your cages and by your sabotage
That I were rendered unable to give my love to anyone EXCEPTING you ever again,
Please know that I would respect my own capacity to love enough
That I would never again pour it out.
My love would simply die inside of me
and rot away with my body --
even in my sorrow of the waste of it,
yet it would be so.
I would rather my ability to love die
before I ever again let you -- who have wronged and devalued that love so wantonly -- to taste
the merest droplet of it.
#Poem #betrayal #abuse #neglect #bad-marriage