To the person who continues to disappoint me

We met in an interview. After we met, talked, I cried. I cried because you were lovely, genuine, positive, enthusiastic, full of love and light. I had just suffered a great personal failure and I had forgotten that people could be happy. The harsh words of my previous employer melted into the past so quickly - your positivity was contagious. A contagion. A drug and a high that I craved, that helped fill up the hole in my damaged self. Immediately, I loved you. I worked harder for you than I have ever worked. For a short, and long, two years.

I don't know when it happened, how it happened. When things changed. I don't know if I made myself too available, said yes too often, but you asked more of me. More and more. More than anyone has ever asked. But I gave. I gave and I offered more and you took it. You took all of it and when there was nothing except what little I kept for myself, I let you take that too. My mood depended on your mood. If you were happy, I was happy. If you were stressed, I was stressed. If you were NOT happy, I cowered, thinking it was somehow my fault.

Your words were always pretty. Sunshine and promises. Every person you met was your new best friend and I saw the conviction of this fact in their eyes - they loved you too. Yet in private, you were quick to wax viscous on their flaws. It made me wonder if your praise of me sounded a little different in other ears. You were quick to make promises you couldn't keep, and brushed off those who followed up. Life was broken promise after broken promise, self-made deadlines that were consistently never met. Witnessing these things happen more and more frequently tainted love's blindness. This is what you were doing to me too, but I was unable to see it. Missed meetings, excuses of more important matters, broken dates, unmet deadlines, leaving me to deal with the fallout. But still I wanted to protect you, to take on more of the load so that your light could recharge, replenish.

I began to argue with my family, my partner. They could see how ill I was, being around you. I still could not see it. I defended you - you were just stressed, you had too much on your plate, you were trying to do something amazing within this shitty world - Wonderwoman. And I was only a small piece of helping with that. I poisoned my body with junk food and alcohol - stress relief I told myself. I imagined how it was in the beginning. After the next big event things will go back to the way they were at the beginning. After the next, maybe the next. It never did. This was the normal. This was your life, and because I felt so tied to you, it was also mine. Anxiety became a new word in my vocabulary. I started fantasizing about being in a plane crash, or being hit by a car. Then maybe I could get out of working with you without having to make the decision myself. That would be best, I told myself.

I was speaking with a friend when she used the term "emotional abuse". She used it referring to your treatment of me. I scoffed. Then I thought. Emotional Abuse. For me, this began the slow realization of what was happening to me. After many weeks - months - of trying to convince myself otherwise, I finally decided to pick me instead of you. When we talked, you took it well. I will never be sure what was said in my absence, though I did find one hurtful email. It was for the best. We remained friends. You continued to break plans. It took me months to regulate my anxiety. Stress is a poison that you have to draw away from your body, from your mind. Stress withdrawal is painful, long, until you emerge on the other side a person again. Maybe not the person you were before, but a person nonetheless.

One year later you break another self-set deadline and date you arranged because there's something more important you have to do. I reply "I understand". A term that I've used with you more than anyone, because I do understand. I understand that the life you have chosen pulls you away from friendships and relationships. I understand that, when duty calls you must answer. And I finally understand that after all this time, never will I be the "something more important you have to do."