The Unsent Draft
Delete. I deleted the message.
I couldn’t face sending it and receiving yet another response which disregarded my feelings. To make me feel like I’m going crazy and that I’m to blame for all of this. I couldn’t face being retraumatised by the same old thing yet again.
I poured my heart out in that message. I said everything I wanted to say to you in person, but I couldn’t deal with having those words rejected and my attempts to make you understand go unnoticed.
For years now, I’ve played the submissive houseguest that does what is required to keep the peace. I make myself so small to avoid bumping into those around me, and today I wanted to change that. To step outside the small box I’ve trapped myself in, stretch out wide and take up more room than necessary. But I couldn’t get past the send button.
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I said everything that needed to be said. How I felt dismissed and unwanted. How I felt alone, like my own world was caving in on me constantly. How distant I felt from love and miles from any sort of connection. How I wanted nothing more than to be held, like a newborn being held by its caregiver, soothed back to comfort.
I’ve always been left this way. The words of others mean I’m forever in debt to the negative emotions that keep taking from me. I’m constantly scrambling out of the pit others put me in without a ladder. Digging my nails into the hard dirt, any attempt to rescue myself, but it doesn’t work. I’m left hurt, wounds deeper than before. I’m always finding myself back at the bottom of that dark, wet hole.
I turn to the only thing I know works. I eat.
My feelings become takeaway food, each bite soothing the parts of me damaged by the thoughts of what our relationship has become. Food replacing the hug I know I’ll never receive. I fill myself to the point of discomfort; if I can’t allow space for emotional hurt, it cannot live in me. I can control this; I cannot control you.
As the last mouthful goes down, I look at the empty plate. The smears of what was my only hope of feeling something remind me that it’s over. I’m left with nothing again. The gut-wrenching feeling of nothing.
That same feeling I have knowing my text will never get through to you.
