Leave Me Now

Holly Blackmore

My troubles are too heavy for your untouched shoulders, my love will ruin you, my thoughts will strip the tender flesh from your bones until you are nothing; drawing on your vitality in a dire attempt to save my own. I think I love you too much to let this happen.

I wrote these words approximately one week after meeting a boy. Already I felt the burden of expectation, of feelings, of performance. Pursuing mutual feelings yet perpetually longing for solitude. I often wonder what made me so self-destructive in nature; even to this date - after being with this same partner for years; even when everything is wet and wonderful; even when I can’t stand the thought of life without him.

Leave me now. No, seriously. I will break you. Countless nights when I’ve whispered these words to him amidst torrents of tears. You don’t deserve this. I’m unfixable, confused, a menace unto the silent space between sentences and sheets. It hurts me to see him still here, beside me, when my mind is nothing but a dead weight.

What breeds this sort of insecurity? I couldn’t pinpoint one particular thing. All that I am sure of is the culminating sense of dread which grips me as night falls, a suffocating sense of self that leaves no room for the pure, endless love of another. I think I love you too much to let this happen. And this is why you should walk out, right now.

But every fibre in my form begs you to stay. I simply can’t handle the strength of what we have together. It’s too good to be true, surely this won’t last. Yet it does; year after year, each turn of the sun more bountiful than the last. He still sleeps beside me, still rubs my sides, caresses my lips. And slowly, my mind accepts this devotion, with no need for volatility. I deserve this love. You deserve it too.