Cages of Love

Chapter Eleven

It's been a week without William around, he hasn't called and I haven't tried to call him either.
My shifts have been crazy at the diner and every night I cry feeling as if I lost a part of me that I can no longer find. I can continue to work all the time and try to stay occupied to avoid thinking about it all but how much longer can I run until it hits me right back in the face?

This is the kind of love I've seen all my life, I don't really get what it's suppose to be or if this is just something we need to get through to love each other harder?

I'm just too exhausted to continue this relationship with someone that can't even say I love you. If you can't say that to someone more than once it isn't there, isn't it? The more I think of William the more my heart feels like it's in my stomach, when I walk outside everything is a blur because I can't stop picturing him walking beside me and passing by all the places we've been to together.

This time there's no going back - if he can't love me then how will anyone love me?

This brings me back to how my mom felt when she first learned my father cheated on her, she would barely get out of bed and when she did she couldn't hold it together. She cried entirely in my arms when I was about 16 years old and I couldn't help but cry because I have never seen her that broken. I didn't understand it at that age because no one had ever cheated on me or made me feel like I wasn't enough but now it's all coming back to me. It's all hitting me in ways that I can't describe. At every shift I can barely bring plates to people's tables without feeling like I'm going to fall over. William shattered my soul and took it with him as a souvenir. He doesn't get it and if he ever does whenever that day comes it'll be too late.
My mom was right all this time - no man is going to truly love me for me.

It's all about what they can take from you and with that burned into my mind I have to cut all my ties from Will.

I continue to tell myself over and over again at work,

"I will throw out his clothes when I get home"
"I will take down our pictures"
"I will block his phone number"
"I can and I will. I can and I will."

By the time I get home it's half past midnight and I tripped over a pair of his sneakers on my way inside. I can feel the tears coming not from the fall but because no matter where I turn or what I try to do, William is there. William was the first boy I've ever loved and the first one to take my body to a different place. I've fooled around with boys before him in high school but no one ever took me to another world. The more I think about it, the more I break down. He's the first to make love to me. The first boy I've ever snuck around with. I can feel my heart breaking into a thousand small pieces and I am trying so hard to pull them back all together. My heart and my mind are screaming that this isn't right - but he doesn't care. I hear my friend Bennett from work telling me;

"It isn't you."

"You aren't the one who's stupid. It's him."

"You aren't the one who is a coward, it's him. You have said I love you, you have been open, you have been trying to communicate and HE shuts you out."

"Don't forget about you. You are a person. Your feelings are valid."

"You deserve more. I wish you could see that."

I lift myself up off the floor and wipe the tears off my face trying to remember who I am but in the midst of trying to remember - it hits me that I have completely lost myself, I can't think of anything that makes me, me without the thought of William somehow in it. I have distilled my growth to fit someones comfort zone. I spent so much time trying to make sure that Will doesn't get back into drinking, trying to keep up with his sobriety, that I completely forgot about my own self care. Not to mention he was never open about anything, constantly saying "I'm not use to being this open." "I've never had a good relationship, I don't know how to make eye contact for that long." Here I am believing he is just complicated and been through a lot but it was all lies, he couldn't look me in the eyes when telling me things because half of the time it was nothing but lies. He stopped telling me the truth when he realized he doesn't really love me, that's why he can't say those words to me anymore.

I am back on the floor but my tears have stopped. My heart feels numb and although this feels like the end and all I want to do is die, I know this is just the beginning. This entire time it isn't about how much I need him to be in my life to feel alive. The painting of the bird in the cage isn't about staying in the cage to fit someones comfort, it's about leaving the cage you've been trapped in for so long and flying away to feel alive and start a new.

None of this is about William anymore, it isn't about loving him any more or any less and it isn't about waiting for him to knock on my door and finally tell me he's ready and wants to do this for real.

I'm walking around my apartment and I see his clothes on the floor of the bedroom. I walk into the kitchen and grab a garbage bag, go back into the room, and start putting his clothes in the bag at first shirt by shirt, slowly reminiscing on how he wore this red and black plaid shirt on our first date and I can feel the tears slowly start but I stop myself and remember that I was a person before him and I will be one after him. I'll be an even better me than I was before I met him. I then take the rest of his things and put it all in the bag, my anxiety is high but I know this is what I have to do. I take our pictures out of the frames around the house and replace them with photos of my friends and I. Once all of his things are in the bag I go into the kitchen and start a new pot of coffee, I sit at the kitchen table and text some friends from the diner telling them to come by later for a classic horror movie night and everyone confirms, Bennett says "Chocolate and wine will be dropped off by me." it makes me smile.

This is about me. It's time for me to love me.