New York

Here I am- almost a year later. The villain of my own story. Self-centered, greedy, manipulative bitch that I am. I live with a man that I don't know if I'm in love with. The classic tale of great sex and fire in the bedroom, but constant discord outside of the bedroom. He is besotted and beside himself; in fact, tonight, he's taking me out to a romantic evening of Phantom of the Opera and the restaurant we first met at. He gives me everything and more and yet ever since the fight where he strangled me and pushed me, I could never find the love I had for him. I know I care for him, I know I have strong feelings, I know the sex is amazing and yet those emotions don't fit together in my heart and call themselves love.

I find new displeasing things about him each day. I've been patient enough to wait for these parts of his personality and tics about him to turn into sentimentally valuable parts of him I'll never forget, but my heart turns away from attempting to do it. I don't like who I am when I'm with him. The evil girlfriend of a fresh  heart that has only just learned to love another. Another dark detail of this fairytale- he's never been in love and he's 40 years old. So much to disagree about: the way I easily offend him, the way my words turn into chunks of coal, the way touching is something I have to think about, the way I am forced to ignore the way I feel and deal with it. I am mean and evil. I thought before, all these years, that I couldn't like myself any less and here I am each day before I go to work thinking about how much I hate myself.

His sad blue eyes beg me to stay and I do because I feel like I have no where else to go. I feel like no place else is more desirable than here, but I hardly want to be here either. Even still, the one person I wish would help me figure out another option besides a shelter coaxes me to love him. Goads him to pamper me. Attempts to bind us with domestic adhesive known to all as "good food". I don't have anyone to turn to. I don't have anywhere to go. I'm trapped here by my own hand and I've become jaded, evil, sour, rotten, and grinched because of it.