Old Friend, my love

My love, I need you to want me. I don’t want to be wanted for what I can give, either, I want to be the person you want to share your happiness with—not just your loneliness. I want to be the person you think of in a crowded room, or when you’re doing something you love; not just when you are homeless or on the street and needing cash.

My love, I need you to want me. I want you to want me without you needing me, without you being driven by a provision you lack. I don’t want you to come to me because I am rich (indeed, I am not rich); I want you to come to me because you want to come to me and be with me and talk to me. I don’t want you to pick up the phone as a control or manipulation tactic. I don’t want your attention to be a bribe that you use to string me along. I don’t want to be used. I don’t want to be unloved by you.

My love, you’ve been using me in your times of need, for provisions that you lack. Yet it is someone else that you miss. Please stay away when all you want is someone else and cash. Please keep your needs from off my doorstep unless you intend to love me. I need you to know that I do not say this out of hate; but I suppose if you take it that way, you do not love me indeed, and maybe that is the test: do you even care? Do you care how you make me feel or how you affect me?

My love (is that even what I ought to call you?), I am beginning to doubt this connection I seemed to have fooled myself about; I am beginning to let go. I am beginning to think I ought not any longer to believe that you care or that you love me. People that care do not do such things to the people they care about. People do not come crawling when they are low, just to get up and run when they are high again; not when they love someone.

My dear, it is not healthy for me to make excuses for you and that is all that I have done. If you loved me, you would try—you would put in the effort to love me so I never would even doubt it in the first place, to even need an excuse on my tongue. It pains me that you’ve left me in such a position. What is this? It is certainly not love.

My dearest, please do not drag me along. Please do not call my name from the ditch, just to call another’s name once I pull you out. Please stop running to my home for warmth, just to run once I’ve given you blankets. I want you to want to share summer with me, not summer with her and winter with me.

My darling, of course I love you on your bad days, of course I’ll be your warmth in winter. It is not that I want you to leave in winter and only spend summer with me, no! If I care for you then I will care for you, but I do not want that to be all that this is. I do not want to only provide for you and then enjoy none of your life with you. This other (these other) women you love in the summer, you give them your life and your effort and your love; but me, you starve. You pull your effort and your love and your warmth away for me, only to turn around and ask me to put myself in debt of these things when you run out and are in need.

Old friend, what we used to have was lovely. Or was that a lie, too? Did you only want me then because you were lonely? I thought you’d proved otherwise to me, or I’d never have walked your way. I am tired of being played, of being used and left behind. I’m sick of it, you see, it’s all that happens every time.

You seem to not understand. You seem to not care. You seem to hate me with the exact weight that you “need” me. But I do not want you to need me. I do not want to be the patcher of your blankets when they grow holes; I do not want to be the mender of the home you share with another woman when it breaks; I do not want to be your back up paycheck, do you care (don’t you know) that I have a life to provide for, too? Or have you forgotten entirely that I am human? Have you forgotten entirely that I am worth something too? That I have needs too?

I have put myself in debt, in loss, in unhealth, giving you all the opposite of the same. I’ve given you more than I have in an attempt to keep you afloat. But the tape with which I’ve been patching the holes of your lifeboat, is the tape that kept mine afloat. And I am definitely responsible for me. But you do not even look at me when you ask, you just toss your hand back where you’ve placed me behind you and tell me “If you care, you’ll give it to me; and if you don’t, then you hate me.” But that is not fair. That is manipulation.

I loved you because you cared about me. I loved you because you didn’t use me. But I suppose I made that observation all too soon.

I’m ready to say goodbye. And if you are scoffing at me right now whispering to yourself how evil and careless I am for stating my own needs and having boundaries as I ought to, then you really are unhealthy for me, and it is time I cut the cord. It is time that I no longer provide for you.

I’ve provided for you even when it was by no means my responsibility to. I’ve done it without love from you, without your presence, without talking to you at all for months at a time. It’s time I stop being your golden fishing pond that gives you whales every time you cast your line. No. I am done being purely your support.

And please don’t call me just to make amends when you realize what you’ve lost. Please only call if you are well and you want me. Please. Otherwise just stay away and stop carelessly taking from me while not even seeing or caring about the destitution you’ve manipulated me into.

Please, I do not want to be your bank, or your source of income. I do not want to be your emergency rescue or a thing for you to ignore until you’re lonely. I hate being treated that way (and so do you), I deserve to be treated better than that, and that is why I left everyone else and allowed you into my life, even after months of fearing I’d be made a fool.

You’ve done to me exactly what I loved you for not doing to me. Exactly what you said you’d never do. Exactly what you seemed to show me that you were not about. And yet, here we are. I am tired of the games, so tired of the pain. I am so tired of being cast aside and trodden underfoot and squeezed out for every valuable thing I own, just to be left as a loveless carcass that is swept out of the street for being “undesirable”.

Do not do this to me. Old friend, please care. With one last chance (which maybe I ought not to give) I ask you, please do not walk over me. My heart is so raw and sore. I’m tired of being treated this way. I am so tired of being discarded and unloved and unwanted and only “wanted” when I’m needed. There ought to be only one lucky person who gets what I give; and it ought to be someone who is willing to give it back to me, not someone who takes it and runs.

This is not too much to ask for. I know it is not. And I have ignored it for too long. So I am not providing you with anything else, no matter the provisions that befall me, for I have already let you overstep and ignore my boundaries for way too, way too long. You have been careless long enough to start waving red flags. And I hate for it to be you painted in red and being tossed in the growing pile of toxic people. Please do not be another one of them. Please do not be one of the masses. Please just love my heart as I have loved yours.

But I deserve better than what you’ve been giving me for the past year and a half. And I am tired of it. I am tired, so tired, of the pain.

Please stop using me. Please stop taking advantage of how I care about me, and using it to my disadvantage. Please stop taking from me without caring about my depletion. Please stop wringing me dry and tossing me aside. It hurts. It hurts and I’m in pain. I’ve been in pain for way too long and all I want is for it to stop. And if you cannot stop and are rolling your eyes right now, condemning me for these words, then please step out and never come back. Never, ever show up at my door. Never, ever call again. Never, ever ask me for help. Because if I do not deserve or get to share your good days, then I ought not to be bearing your bad days.

I have me to support, and I am my responsibility, but now I am ignoring myself and denying my own needs and my own security and that is not right. It is not healthy at all for me to put myself in the dust and lie down to be run over so that you can stay afloat.

Please stay away if all you intend to do is want me when you need me. Please stop needing me. I am so tired of being needed. Please just want me, or go away and never ever come back. If you cannot care about me or even offer me human decency, then you deserve no place or day in my life at all, and nothing of what I earn.

Take part in it all, or take no parts of me or my life at all.

If this seems cruel of me to ask, then maybe it’s time to ask if you even consider me to be human, or if you consider me not at all. If you grimace at this statement, then you really have used me beyond your capability to understand the health of my needs and boundaries. You’ve stepped on me too much, if you can look at my face and see nothing but a road to walk on.

I deserve to be seen as a person with needs who deserves to be cared for (to deserve to care for her own self none-the-less). I deserve to have my needs recognized and respected. I deserve to not have my boundaries be scribbled away and marked as “unloving” when I won’t be used. It is unfair to be told that I do not care if I am not willing to give away every one of my needs for someone else’s sake. It is cruel to be told that I am not allowed to have my limits. And I deserve better than that. I deserve much better than the ways you’ve treated me.

If all of this opens your eyes and you make the effort to care, then we can try again at this friendship; but if you scoff and twist your face and point to me to blame, then you really only see me as a road to walk on and a well to deplete, and you deserve no place in my life and nothing from me ever again. And I will kindly, but firmly ask you to leave—to pack your things and never come back. And that door will be locked. You cannot have access to my provisions or security or blessings, if I do not have access to yours. You cannot ask me to care or to love if you are not willing to do the same. So ask nothing of me, unless you put in equal effort, but never again reach behind your back with open hands to use pity against me into depleting myself for yourself without ever even looking at my face as a human being or looking into my eyes and caring about what you see.

You ought not to have access to me to expect me to endlessly give, when you are not even willing to give me time out of your day. You ought not to ever need me if you don’t even want me. Do not ask love of me, if you will not give the same.

Do not be to me what you fooled me into believing you’d never be. Do not trick me into love, this isn’t fair, either.