A Broken Partner
“Is that really what you’re crying about?” He asked. My black cat, Arrow, had accidentally scratched both of my feet. I kept looking down at the thick, dark red lines of blood. I couldn’t stop crying. Yes, it physically hurt but everything did too. I cried about the scratches but also about everything else in my life.
I cried because I had finally realized, I was broken. I wasn’t having a bad day or horrible luck. This had been years in the making. I was incomprehensibly broken. I was wearing my 11 year old fuzzy snowman pajamas, barefoot in my bathroom watching blood and tears drip; broken. For most of my dating history, I was always the person in the relationship dealing with their “brokenness”. I was the one fighting for them to see their worth. Loving them unconditionally in hopes they would learn to love in return. I could never understand why they could not “get it together”. That's what we expect out of people, right? We expect for them to eventually get their shit together. Perhaps know what they want to do as a career. Maybe figure out what they want out of a relationship. Could they maybe leave their childhood trauma behind them?
I love to my own detriment but this relationship had finally left me shattered. I had been depressed on and off since the start of our relationship. I kept making excuses for my depression. It might be my job. It could be stress. I gained weight and insecurity. The more I hung on to the unhealthy relationship, the deeper I dug myself into this. He had played on my insecurities. He fed off my unhappiness because he was getting exactly what he wanted. A shitty version of me. A version no one else would want and would have no other option but to stay.
After I had finished cleaning my physical wounds, put the bandaids on, and climbed into bed, he came in and made fun of the way I had cried. He then shared the best advice his grandfather had given him as a child: “Don’t believe a woman when she cries. If a women cries, doesn’t matter if it is your mom or God, she is most likely faking it.” It dawned on me: there is a power struggle with a broken partner. Our decisions, mood, days depend on the “non-damaged” person within the relationship. I mean, if they are empowering, then great! You might have a shot but if you find yourself with a toxic person who can manipulate these shattered pieces, you may have fucked yourself over.
No one should be responsible or hold power over how you feel, what you do, or your journey to rediscovering yourself. It took me drowning in the murky water of despair and some awful, accidental cat scratches for me to finally realize why I could never fix my partners. When you are so deep in it, a supportive partner isn’t enough. How did I ever expect my partner to pull themselves out of this feeling? I now understood what seemed like irrational anger. It was an all-consuming anger that festered and boiled over into every aspect of life. It was heavy resentments you carry like pocket stones. I felt sorry for all the times I yelled at my partners for their “brokenness”. What I considered their biggest weakness was now so familiar to me. So if you are the one trying to put the pieces back together, here are my words of advice: stop trying to fix what is not meant for you to fix. You might otherwise miss the signs when you being to crack.
