That everyone was scared
Like little lost children in their grown up clothes and poses
So we ended up alone here
Floating through long wasted days
Or great tribulations
While everything felt wrong

____________________

I’ve been soothing a broken heart for a while now. Oh boy, this one is pretty tender. In a lot of ways I feel the getting-over-of-someone would be simpler if those who can’t love me the way I want them to love me were just complete trash. It would feel a little more easy to reason with your brain and heart that someone isn’t worth being sad over, if they hadn’t treated you very well. Life isn’t black and white like this though, so there’s quite a long, painful period of reasoning in my head to be done: “They don’t want you, therefore they aren’t the one for YOU”. That’s kind of the only argument; and it’s a shitty one. I don’t want to listen to that argument. I want to rebel against that, I want to stamp my feet. Why don’t they want me?

I do sometimes feel exactly like a little lost child, parading around in my grown up clothes, pretending to be an adult, keeping it together, presenting a veneer of knowing-what-I’m-doing-ness. Yes, I can handle this mature relationship – I can handle my pain when faced with someone else’s needs and wants that don’t match mine. Yes, I can move on and not be petty that this particular someone doesn’t want me as a partner. Yes, I can cast away the urge to convince and beg because I’ve got more self-respect than that. Yes, I’m adult enough to realise it doesn’t work like that. I am, right?

Today, I considered a new reason for my inappropriateness as his partner that I’d never before contemplated, despite the description literally coming out of his mouth many times. This one hurt more than anything I had ever regarded as a reason not to have a relationship with me. He told me many times that we would not raise children in the same way. I don’t think I took in the gravity of those words until now: I cannot be the Mother of his children.

I’d never thought about anyone considering me as a potential Mother to their children and I’d certainly never thought about them deciding I wasn’t fit for that role in their life. Somehow “I don’t want you as my girlfriend” just wasn’t hurtful at all compared to “I don’t want to raise children with you”.

This revelation was as devastating as it was a release. Despite it being crushing, there’s no changing something as fundamental as not being seen as someone you can raise children with.

Hope in this may be futile, however now I have only one option: Move on. There is nothing to reason with.

____________________

Brothers and Sisters
Hope still waits in the wings
Like a bitter spinster
Impatient
Lonely
And shivering
Waiting to build her glorious fires.