It feels like she put my heart to a grater and didn’t stop until there was nothing left — only mush, where the hopeful center of my core once lived. Now I physically have to cover my face with both hands, even when I’m alone, to hide from the shame of the man I once was.
Love didn’t just make me blind; it made me stop caring about any dignity of the self. The ease with which she betrayed me from the very beginning wasn’t a reflection of her supposed cruelty, but of the lack of self-esteem I was raised with — a childhood so starved of affirmation that I had no instinct for self-preservation.
Decades later, the rage I feel toward every party involved — her, my dysfunctional family structure that crippled any chance of healthy pride, and the weakling I was — all of that pain exists because those who claimed to care had only their own selfish selves in mind.
Khadim Zaman's Blog 