Someone Else’s Love
pt. 2
Would you believe me if I told you I spent a Friday night wandering the Venice strand, looking for a palm reader? I sat down on her back porch and paid a fortune to get my fortune. I spent the chilly night outside the bar scene, spending money I needed for groceries on the thought curated from looking at my hand at first glance.
She said, “Someone will remind you that you are capable of being loved.” That shot precisely through my chest, and I felt my heart split in half as both pieces tumbled symmetrically into either half of my ribcage. l would have preferred to vomit in my own lap. At the time, being loved by someone didn’t hold any positive value. I could not compute exactly what that meant, but it made me want to throw up. In my head, it would be the same as it always has been. I would be lucky enough to be loved back. I have conditioned myself to believe love will not come to me unconditionally, but I must work for it. Maybe that is what made my stomach turn. Time has passed, and all my other fortunes have fallen through, so I turn over the thought of being loved with every other birthday wish, dream, and prediction that has not come to be fate, divine timing, or good luck.
I opened a fortune cookie last night that did not contain a fortune. This lack of a paper-written fortune led me to think my lack of fortune might be my fault. Not that I deserve bad things, but I am so closed off to the possibility that I have neglected the what-ifs that fortunes bank on to come true. I feared for so long that I was unlovable. What time and fortunes have helped me realize is not that I will never be loved again, but that I am terrified I will never be able to love after you. I don’t love you anymore. But I don’t trust myself either, for I don’t know how I ever let myself fall for you. How did I get hurt by someone who would never be the one for me? The self-sabotage of loving you haunts me to this day. It was not just working to feel reciprocated love, but it was the damage that came after working so hard for love that would never be mine. All of it. It is self-sabotage. How could loving you ever be a part of loving me?
