NJM 2: To Know Something To Hope For Here

You told me that the scars you bear
are beautiful and real
so turn the lights back on again
I wanna see the things you feel.

One Night – Goo Goo Dolls

You looked so vulnerable that day, almost. Like I had touched some part inside that you wished I hadn’t. I think some part of you needs me, not like a drug addict, but in the way that a heart tugs toward someone in the shadowed tranquility of night. Parts of you are so twisted and mangled that I don’t recognize them anymore; the heart, the common sense, the softness in your hands as they came around my waist. The things about you now are so terribly elusive, blackened, if not completely submerged beneath waves of suppressed emotions.
But the way you looked at me that Friday, with the sun climbing through your dark hair, cigarette smoke tangling around your words…. it was almost eerie. Almost like something in you was reaching out.
But it’s not like it matters. Not in the face of lie after lie after lie – I have been done injustice by many men, but you might be the worst. The way you look right into my eyes warmly, while the filth spews out smoother than your baby-soft back. The things about you I must admire and cannot love; the nonchalance and disinterest in many things, the "my way or the highway" attitude. You struck me, so uncaring, not in the physical sense, but emotionally. You destroyed every ounce of trust, every ounce of faith in you when you admitted, laughingly, to your lies. When your eyes, once so full of unconditional love and lightness, glazed over with anger, or perhaps crippling stoicism.
I don’t hate you, I hate everything you’ve become, everything you stand for now.
I can’t accept responsibility for doing this to you; it is your own character flaws that have put you on so low a peg.
And I don’t know what to hope for anymore.

Love,
Amanda.