In love with a ghost and unknown allies.

I realized something very important last week. I was sitting in this overstuffed armchair that I'm always in every other Tuesday. I was crying and the realization struck me like an open-palmed slap on the face. I looked up and knew why all my relationships had failed. I had tried so hard to be in one for the sake of not being alone.

That's a harrowing thought when you really get right down to it. I was with people so I wouldn't have to be alone. Even after I realized how much, at times, I didn't love or like the person I was with. I stayed. Just so I could say I had someone. Just so I would know I wasn't alone. Christ.

How stupid is that?

I guess I had become clichéd. I was in love with being in love or being with someone and not the actual person. How many times have people done that? How many times have I done that? I stopped to think about it and I sobbed harder. I had allowed myself to stay in places and with people that were poisonous to me for the sheer sake of escaping my loneliness to another place all together. A place that was worse.

Now, I find that another person has been blighted by him. She was given the same damned contrite lines I was the first time he left me. You would think he could come up with better material for a new person. I reached out to her in that moment because I had heard stories of how he treated her and I felt like I was reaching out to me from a year ago. God, how I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted for the longest time to just save her from what I knew would happen. Him leaving her. Breaking her heart. That by somehow saving her would save me from myself. Instead, I waited until I knew I could be of help rather than potential harm.

Meanwhile, she has been looking at my blogs all this time. So without me knowing, she knew of me. Life's funny like that. I want to help her the way others have helped me.

We both deserve better than him. He deserves nothing.