"When You’re the One Who Did the Fucking Damage" By Zen Prem

I know it's a long text, but worth reading...at least I enjoyed it...

It reminds me of a situation I was in....When people don't show up for you, that is also a betrayal...I agree.

I didn’t break her heart.

I just drained her soul over time and called it a phase.

She asked for connection.

I rolled my eyes and gave her a fucking TED Talk on why she shouldn’t need it.

It’s easy to talk about being betrayed.

But what about when you were the one holding the match?

I didn’t cheat. I didn’t scream. I just withheld. I just made her feel like she was too much, too often. And then called her unstable

I was the one who made her question her sanity, not by screaming or storming out, but by going quiet.

By deflecting. By saying, “You’re overreacting,” when she was just trying to make sense of the way my eyes started disappearing long before my body did.

I was the man who said all the right things

while living like a walking contradiction.

The man who called her paranoid for checking my phone while I was out there building back-up plans on dating apps

I swore I’d deleted.

The man who said, “Of course I love you,”

but couldn’t sit in the room for five minutes when she cried.

And when she finally stopped trying?

When she went quiet?

I had the audacity to call her cold.

I used to think betrayal had to look like a one night stand. Something obvious.

Something Hollywood.

I thought I was being “conscious” because I didn’t rage or cheat.

But you can ghost someone while living in the same house

Because the truth is that sometimes betrayal is just not showing the fuck up.

It’s apathy. It’s absence. It’s the moment she needed reassurance and I gave her logic. It’s when she reached for me and I reached for my excuses.

And then I had the balls to be confused

about why she couldn’t bounce back.

Why she didn’t trust me the same.

Why she hesitated when I touched her.

But trust isn’t a switch.It’s a nervous system. And once you’ve made someone feel unsafe, you don’t get to ask them to be soft on your schedule.

You don’t get to stab someone emotionally

and then rush their recovery because it’s inconvenient for you to sit in the discomfort you created.

So if you’re reading this thinking,

“Shit. I was him,”

good.

That’s the start.

But don’t rush in to fix it with fucking flowers and promises. Don’t perform guilt hoping to speed past the part where she doesn’t believe a fucking word you say.

Don't fucking bullshit yourself.

Sit in it.

Hold it.

Earn her safety back, … if she even wants you to.

Because real repair isn’t about the right apology. … It’s about becoming someone who doesn’t need to apologise again.

And sometimes you don’t get to be forgiven.

Sometimes she heals, and never fucking looks back.

You don’t get her back.

You just get the lesson."

By Zen Prem (Noah David)

Co-author of Beyond Bullshit To Bliss

with Samantha Spiro

#FoidForThought