the darker fairytale

you said i wasn’t free.
i had to do all these other things to be a better person. it was like a riddled quest.

i believed you, especially when my friends, afraid of you, shed me like winter fur.
i wasn’t worthy because i wasn’t good enough.

i was the ugly person and the unstable woman – that’s what they called me.

the witch.
sometimes you called me beautiful.

you were radical, honest, feminist, intellectual, you said.
you said you’d saved me.

then when you were angry, you’d throw me right back there, with him, and him, and him.
you would return to me witch status, and bestow “slut” like a cloak, crown me with “inhuman”, “uncultured”, “dirty-hearted”.

because you’d been emasculated by your idea of my past, your religion and culture, you wished me dead.

so i died and was reincarnated into something the darker fairytales tell.

[useful resources]

self-appointed guru messiah

on the night we met, i didn’t even notice you at first – that was a first for you, said the great manipulator, everyone sees you and wants to talk to you.

the way you treat your friends told another tale. you seemed at first to have a lot of people swanning around you, fawning at your word. on film, in your own words, you can be quite the messiah.

I choose only gold, you say, the one percent of humanity. everyone else are sheep that deserve to die, they have no morals.

and yet you treat them like they owe you. if they don’t deliver, if they say something you don’t want to hear, if they draw up boundaries against your barrage, you cut and burn. friends that you, seconds ago, called sister and brother are obliterated while you seethe at the injustices done to his majesty.

they tell me this is called splitting.

i watched – and learned to bite my tongue about it – as your close friends dwindled to a handful of curated women who conveniently don’t know one another.

your well-spaced harem.

your behaviour saw me lose some of my friends, too, through the tactics of manipulation and isolation, and through my need to protect them from your threats when i refused to comply.

they were clearly only the friendships that weren’t built to last – but that shedding should never have been up to you.

i wish you hadn’t seen me that first night.

[useful resources]

pandora’s box

you had a fixation with my past. a literal stalking obsession.

i learnt a new condition: retroactive jealousy.

you broke into my phone and computer and took screenshots of emails, messages and chats and photos from months and even a decade before i even met you. things i’d forgotten i had.
at odd times and, for drama’s sake, you’d send these to me.

you created a DIY version of my past:
where did i go with this person? how many orgasms did i have with them?
how come i didn’t go/do/see this with you?
why don’t you do these things with me?
you give all the wrong people everything and me nothing!

the blind manipulator, and whatever i answered he said i was telling him lies.

and this little people pleaser learnt too late – again – that telling someone about me became my pandora’s box – something dreadful i only just managed to close the lid on in time, on all the sharp-edged things you would have used to flay me.

as it was, the little i did say became the kafkaesque foundations of the shame and hell you created for me.

[useful resources]

c is for coercion, not change

you were sick, you say. all better now. i should come back. you’ve changed. thing is, i’ve already done the standard runs and returns, falling for that bullshit.

that time i bought a ticket for a train out of the country, but i had no plan nor money and i knew you would follow me and you did and took me back home by force.

there, there.

while i was nauseous on the train, you took photos of me, sent them to your cronies, and laughed at how pathetic and sad i looked. with you i did look old.

you have that effect on people.

and then i escaped not long after that, flew a whole day and night away from you, but with so much distance, you were so so so sweet, sad, sorry.

ok, another chance.

and then a relative died.

and then in warsaw, you stripped me of cash and gloves and better the blizzard in january and the ten kilometres i ran to escape your wrath.

that time i blocked you and you got your ex girlfriend to tell me your mother was in hospital.

ok. another chance.

then another time by the river – always after hours for train escapes – and another time by the river, and another one…and…and…
it was only the pandemic that shook me till my teeth rattled, and time and distance peeled my eyes to what you are. and who i am. and i still saw you in the sun, with the hope to salvage some sort of friendship. by then i did not trust you, and you pushed me down the stairs and threw me about in a flat in malta and the rest of the time i counted down the days until i was far away from you.

that time i recorded the abuse and i sent it to friends, so that i was accountable to not be coerced into believing you, or anyone, who says they’ve changed. actions, i believe. words are frass.

and now you admit you were sick.

i know, i say.

addio.

[useful resources]