Session Twelve
Her Name Was Blu
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Why?
When a good one finally comes along, we sprint in the opposite direction. Like a rite of fucking passage.
It’s over (but I’m happy?)
We’re done (we didn’t have the chance to start…)
No pain (and no love either.)
Where’s the future? Of what we could be?
Why do we insist on recreating the past as if we’re dealing with the same person who locked us in there?
Because we’re all thinking of someone, aren’t we?
… Aren’t you?
Someone who’s got a chain around our necks and yanks us closer every time we sniff out a happy ending.
Take it from me.
Don’t ghost the future love of your life, for the loss of the past.
One day you’ll look back and realize, that loss wasn’t standing in the way of your happy ending.
It was preparing you for it.
***
Cole never fought to be with me. I fought to be with Cole.
And in between our happy ending was a big angry monster with scarred skin, rage in her chest, and a mountain of grief in her soul.
Her name was Blu.
And boy oh boy, was she terrifying.
The way she talked… it was madness. Like she had a volcano of insults ready to erupt every time she found joy – or peace – a quiet, kind love.
I’d yell at her, I’d say: “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
And she’d smile at me. “I could ask you the same question.”
It’s crazy, eerie, how we can feel two things at once.
Sad, happy. Laughter in tears.
We could love and we could hate.
I know the difference. I’ve felt the difference. But in the presence of attention you mistake it for affection and confuse it as love.
Something to cherish.
Yet, something to burn.
What was Jace? Was he something to cherish?
Or something to burn?
You tell me.
How did you feel when he was gone?
Your Jace.
Relief? Closure?
More pain?
Good. Follow that feeling.
Because the longer you romanticize what hurt you, the stronger the pull becomes.
And the most dangerous thing you will ever come to love, is the idea that the story could have been written any other way.
***
I spent countless hours changing up the ending in my head.
Wondering, by some grace of God, if he missed me enough to come back.
I had him blocked and it took everything in me not to unblock his number in times of crisis.
He was my fucking crisis, and yet I craved his advice.
What do I do about Cole? Should I keep seeing him? Is it too fast?
Naturally, he’d tell me to leave him, and it absolutely was too fast because anyone who wasn’t him was out of the question.
Funny, how even when they hurt us, we still crave their love.
Whatever he could give, I would take.
And that’s why it was damn near impossible to find solace in the little things Cole would give me.
Jace was my best friend.
He knew the ugly parts, and he made them uglier.
But the times he made me feel beautiful, I’d never felt more seen.
That’s how you know you’re in too deep.
When the hand you keep reaching for, is the hand holding you underwater.
***
Jace wasn’t keeping me stuck.
My devotion to him was.
There comes a point where you have to stop looking at yourself through their eyes, stop asking questions you’ll never get the answers to.
Why does he stay?
It is because of who I am? Or my body?
Am I easy to love? Or easy to control?
Now, look harder.
What do you see?
Someone who treats you well, or someone who discards you like a gambling chip on a poker table?
Someone who cashes you in when they’re losing –
Only to blame you for when they do.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Right.
But what if the player keeps coming back when they’ve lost it all. Then, whose fault is it?
The man who will never change?
Or the girl who wishes he could?
…
Her Name Was Blu.