When you realize you’re a caught in a loop

I realized the other day that I am a masochist. I thought to myself at my moment of realization, "well, at least, I’m only so in the emotional sense, not the physical," but then I realized that I might be worse off.

I was sitting alone when it dawned on me that if my ex, the damn artist, came back to me and said that he didn’t care about our problems, that he didn’t care about our issues, that he would always love me… I would jump right back into his skinny arms. Fuck me, I thought, I am a fucking masochist.

Why do I want the one thing that brought me as much pain as all other relationship pains combined? Why would I be with the ONE person who can and has hurt me more deeply and devastatingly than anyone else has come close to doing?

I left him! Why do I feel like he left me, and somewhere buried deep in my heart, I’m waiting for him to come back? Just this week, I sent him a text message to ask about an artist whose name I’d forgotten and when he called me back, my stomach was twisted into knots and was for the rest of the day. It kills me to think about him living with his steady-she-takes-care-of-me-and-loves-me girlfriend. I know he doesn’t like to think of me with other men, but where I would have thrown everything out to be together, he wouldn’t have.

And that’s why I left. And that’s why I feel like he left me. Because I knew that if I didn’t leave, one day he would have. And he wept in my arms about not being good enough for me, and yet, I didn’t want him to be good enough. I wanted to not be the second best option.

This isn’t love. This isn’t some movie romance where we end up together after it all. This is real life where we move on with our emotional bruises and scars, and I realize that I must be a masochist because those injuries draw me back time and again. There isn’t enough good in that relationship to pull me back so it has to be the agony.

Perhaps I should become an artist. Then I have an excuse for wanting to seek out my personal agony – to make great art. Yet, in the end, I simply wallow in the dark, alone.