Rewind the Tape

Rewind the tape.
No, farther.
Back before I let you get your hands on my life.
Back before I stood there like a fucking idiot
thinking this was love
Because you knew how to look wounded
and say my name like it meant something.

Rewind the tape
to before I called your damage depth,
before I let your diagnosis dress up
as charm,
as chemistry,
as fate,
as whatever stupid beautiful thing,
I needed it to be
so I would not have to admit
I was handing myself over
to someone who only knows how to take.

Before the love-bombing.
Before the mirroring.
Before the same cheap cycle
of being wanted, used, and gutted
and me still thinking,
maybe this time would be different.

If I could erase the moment I chose you,
my life would be unrecognizable.

Maybe I would still have my job.
Maybe I would have finished my degree.
Maybe I would have used those two hundred hours of vacation
to go somewhere beautiful
instead of throwing them into your endless need.
Maybe I would not have learned hunger so well
it stopped feeling like danger
and started feeling earned.
Maybe I would still do photoshoots
without picking apart my body afterward
like I’m reviewing damage.
Maybe I would sleep without medication.
Maybe I would still like myself.

Instead I get this.

I get the fourth new job in a year.
I get ketamine therapy.
I get intake forms, insurance cards,
books about abuse and control,
the humiliating full-time job
of trying to become a person again
after loving someone whose need
could only feed on other people.

I get coming home
to clean up the eating disorder,
the fear,
the part of me that now flinches at closeness
like every tenderness is a setup.
I get Lundy Bancroft
instead of the queer poetry books
I used to read when I still believed
love might make me bigger.

Rewind the tape.
Not because I miss you.
Jesus Christ.
Not because I want you back.
Because I want my life back.
Because I want the version of me
who had not chosen you yet,
the one who still had options,
the one who still believed her future
was something she got to walk toward
instead of drag behind her.

That is the part that kills me.
Not just that you were bad.
Not just that I loved you.
It’s that there was a moment
where I could have kept walking.
I could have saved myself.
And I didn’t.

You were not the love of my life.
You were the worst decision of it.