Human Contradictions

I met a man.

There was a connection so instant, it felt like my soul recognized his—like we’d been lovers in a past life, or perhaps enemies who never stopped circling each other.

He became my secret, my shame, my conflict, my happiness.

Quite literally, my everything.

He was the pulse in my throat when I spoke too freely.

The ache in my chest when I remembered he wasn’t mine.

He was the knot of guilt, the flicker of pleasure, the remorse that followed every stolen moment.

He was my greed, my master, my daddy.

But he also belonged to someone else.

Where he had all he wanted, I was the secret on the outside.

I was the one who would lose it all.

So my lips became sealed.

We met in places that didn’t exist on maps.

Secret spots.

Shadows of rooms.

Corners of time.

We laughed, we touched, we played in the dark—but the connection was born from a pregnancy of lies and betrayal.

I never heard his lies whispered.

He gave me verbal honesty, but his actions hit me like an inactive broom—meant for short-term use, discarded when the dust settled.

Still, his presence felt familiar.

Like a home I hadn’t visited in years.

Like a childhood blanket pulled from the attic, still warm with memory.

He was there.

And then he wasn’t.

Days folded into weeks, weeks into months.

But it was always the shenanigans that shouldn’t have been.

The desires that pulled us together.

And then time would shift, and he would become a shadow of himself—leaving me fragments, echoes, and the scent of something once whole.

There was someone else.

A settling had been done before my time.

And while I was wanted, I was merely a suggestible, comforting resolution to his darker desires.

I was the gap filler.

The kink plug.

The submissive little girl who made him feel powerful when his wife fell short.

So where did I fit in when the masks came off?

When his outside life met his secret pleasures, where did I stand?

I was nothing more than a manipulative tool for his own gain.

My heart had to let him go.

And so I wrote him:

“It was nice to meet you and I truly mean that. I believe there was a connection and I am genuinely sad that I couldn’t be different in my mindset.

I said many things, so I don’t quite know what you are referring to. And while I may be youngish, I have lived a very experienced life and can only view things from the level of understanding I have.

I genuinely do not judge you, or your choices, they are yours to make.

I understand urges and needs, but I also understand how hurt a person can be to learn they have been betrayed or worse, lose their self-worth and value as a response to the violation of trust and respect.

But my belief system does not have to align with yours and therefore not my place to define you.

Which is why I will happily talk to you, but I will always be a non-sexual little friend.”

Two months later, I was raped.

It was 3 a.m.

I said stop.

Halfway through, I gave in—because it was easier to wait it out than endure it as a trauma I’d never escape.

And then life didn’t get much better.

I poured my heart out to him.

I told him what my life had been like since I left.

I wrote:

“I feel like my soul holds a purity that many don’t understand and so I am mostly overlooked.

Those that can see me, generally it is what they can take from me.

I spent my days trying to negotiate why I should get out of bed and not let myself rot in bed to a disability that consumes 90 percent of my life.

My housemate dangles the roof I have over my head every other day.

It’s like a constant state of psychological warfare.

My disability had everyone but one person walk out on me and it fucking hurts.

I am constantly screwed and it’s never in a fun way.

Not long after I left this site, I met someone who raped me at 3 a.m.

I said stop.

He bit me...bit my vagina like it was a club sandwich.

I fought. I cried. I tried to tense my body shut.

My legs were tightly closed.

But then, I stopped fighting.

Because surrender was quicker.

I just wanted to go home.”

But home was a myth.

I lived with my ex-husband in his emotionally incestuous mother’s house.

She kicked me out on a whim—mostly at night, mostly in winter.

My ex was the buffer, the fragile thread keeping my shelter intact.

she had an emotional insest desire for her son, so she allowed me to stay at his request, but my word was it like gifting my soul to the devil.

It was a game of life.

Dog eat dog.

And I was the bone.

I wasn’t a bad person.

But the universe seemed to disagree.

I was born to be raped.

My mother rented out my bits and pieces for as long as I can remember.

My body was hers.

My earnings were hers.

Her kryptonite: Meth.

I never stood a chance.

I was tired.

Of life.

Of fighting.

Of being used and discarded like a broken toy.

And then, in the midst of chaos, I ran to him again.

The man who broke my heart the same time he mended it.

I wrote:

“There is an unexplainable desire I couldn’t fathom.

Not even in my creative words could I find a meaning that would explain such desire.

I just know it’s there.”

He replied with a photo.

A beautiful island.

Palm trees.

Blue skies.

And the words:

“Life is not as bad as you think.”

His message burnt my soul.

How insensitive.

How cruel.

How laughable.

I spat venom back:

“Keep your pep talks to yourself.

It’s the equivalent of eating a feast in front of a starving homeless man.

While I fight to keep a roof over my head and the bare minimum to survive...

When’s the last time you had to worry?

Your biggest misfortune is not having a wife fulfill all your sexual needs and kinks.

Go fuck yourself.”

He said his door would always be open.

But I was still angry.

Burnt.

So I told him to close the door.

I would rather die than walk through it.

He apologized the next day.

I came back.

But he was gone.

Not blocked.

Not ignoring.

Deleted.

A permanency more final than any other option.

Now I live with my words.

Why should he have stayed when I had opted to die?

I found jumping in acidic puddles more enjoyable than him.

And now, as I sit here and stare at his profile—at the last words we spoke—I feel the shedding of a new shell.

With him gone, so go the ties and locks that mapped me to him.

He deleted his profile.

No warning.

No message.

Just gone.

Not blocked.

Not ghosted.

Erased.

And I knew why.

Because I told him to close the door.

The one he said would always be open.

The one I refused to walk through.

I said I’d rather die than enter it.

And he believed me.

Now I sit with the silence.

Not the kind that screams.

The kind that hums low in the chest, like a sorrow-shaped bruise.

There’s a sadness in my heart.

A truth I can’t unwrite.

My words caused this.

And yet I mourn the outcome.

I wonder—did I walk away from love?

Or did I escape something so smootheringly unhealthy

That staying would have cost me my breath, my boundaries, my becoming?

He offered me a door.

But it was carved from compromise.

Painted with secrecy.

Hinged on his convenience.

And I—

I wanted more than that.

I wanted to be chosen in daylight.

Not hidden in shadows.

I wanted to be held with both hands, not one hand on me and the other on a lie.

So I walked away.

And he disappeared.

I stare at the last words we exchanged.

They flicker in my memory like a dying candle.

The heat is gone, but the wax still drips.

I refresh the page.

Again.

Again.

Again.

But he’s not coming back.

And maybe that’s mercy.

Because love shouldn’t feel like drowning.

Desire shouldn’t feel like debt.

And connection shouldn’t come at the cost of my self-respect.

I didn’t walk through his door.

But I walked through my own.

And on the other side, I found quiet.

Not peace.

Not joy.

But quiet.

And in that quiet, I began to hear myself again.

Anger is a wildfire.

It doesn’t ask permission.

It doesn’t wait for logic.

It burns through everything—truth, tenderness, even love.

And when it’s done, all that’s left is ash.

Ash and memory.

I said things I can’t unsay.

Words that came from pain, not clarity.

Words that were sharp, venomous, designed to wound.

But words don’t disappear.

They don’t dissolve in regret.

They echo.

And he heard them.

All of them.

I told him to close the door.

I told him I’d rather die than walk through it.

I told him to go fuck himself.

And he did what I asked.

He closed the door.

He left.

I didn’t expect him to.

I thought he’d wait.

I thought he’d understand that my rage was just a storm passing through.

But people don’t have to wait for your weather to change.

They don’t have to sit in your thunder.

They don’t have to drown just because you’re sinking.

If you truly care about someone,

You don’t ask them to suffer with you.

You don’t punish them for your pain.

You don’t spit fire and expect them to hold the flame.

I was hurting.

But hurt doesn’t justify harm.

And now, I live with the consequences.

Not just of his absence,

But of my own actions.

I held myself like a wounded animal,

Snarling at anyone who came close.

I mistook vulnerability for weakness.

I mistook love for obligation.

But love isn’t a debt.

It’s a choice.

And he chose to leave.

Not because he didn’t care.

But because I made it impossible to stay.

I wanted him to feel what I felt.

To ache like I ached.

To drown like I drowned.

But drowning isn’t romantic.

It’s suffocating.

And no one deserves to be pulled under just to prove they care.

So I sit with my silence.

Not as punishment.

But as penance.

I hold my words like stones in my mouth.

Heavy.

Unswallowed.

Permanent.

And I learn.

I learn that anger must be named before it’s unleashed.

I learn that pain must be held before it’s handed off.

I learn that love, real love, doesn’t survive on apologies alone.

It needs accountability.

It needs grace.

It needs space to breathe.

I didn’t give him that.

And he left.

My lips are sealed.

Not because I have nothing to say.

But because I’ve learned the cost of saying too much, too cruelly, too soon.

I will speak again.

But next time,

I will speak with care.