venusoppositesaturn

[venusoppositesaturn]

It makes me so fucking angry that I never sent that email back in October. That I never got to tell you how awful you are as a person without fear that I’d never hear from you or see you again. That I didn’t just leave you in the fucking dark to torture yourself with the knowledge that I would never think about you again. I let you squeeze every bit of joy and happiness and love from my body, I watched you ,in real time, discard me like a fucking juiced orange. Nothing but pulp and rind and skin. Your obsession with me turning to ice cold apathy in real time, and I let it happen. You are like a child who pours salt on a slug. Watching it melt and wither and die before your eyes with the righteousness that it deserved it because of how ugly it is. Your treatment of me made me ugly. It made me hateful and insecure. My brain is so rotted now that even worms won’t live inside it. All I can think of is you. Day after day. How I want to call you. How I want to scream at you. You picked me up and put me down so many times and I let it happen because I am so fucking starved for affection that even now, after all you have done to me, my hatred of you is at war with my love for you. I only wish that I knew what it meant to feel real love so I can bleach every stain you have left on my body and soul away for good. I write how much I miss you in my journal nearly every day as if you actually brought something to my life other than anxiety and self doubt and shame. I am haunted by the ghosts of women I have never even met. Women who will experience all of your affection and attention at once, just the way I did. I think of all of it in such excruciating detail. How much kinder you are to them because they are prettier than me, smarter than me, more successful than me. That you would never even dream of leaving them on the side of the street at 8 AM in the cold because you couldn’t spare the extra 15 minutes on your morning commute. How you’d make sure they’d get home safely instead of expecting them to walk 2.5 miles home in the freezing dark because they live “out of the way” and surely not because you informed them beforehand of that. I feel so much guilt for co-signing that behavior. For loading the gun with you over and over again to shoot it straight at my face with such gross mistreatment. I should have known better, right? In the last hours of being near you, all I wanted was someone to make me feel less scared. I never asked anything from you but kindness. To get you to try and understand me the way I tried so hard to understand you. You couldn’t even give me that. You got everything you ever wanted from me and it still wasn’t enough. I was grieving not just for the loss of another member of my family, but for whatever shred of interest in me you had left. I tried so hard to push through it but the months of abuse just kept rising to the surface. It wasn't fucking fair that you got to move on and be happy after everything you've done to me. The House always winning. But the punishment truly did not fit the crime. I pray every day that you die. That I don’t have to think about you out in the world living guiltless and happy. Knowing that you feel truly vindicated for leaving me on that sidewalk. That I am just some attention-seeking head case who thrives on conflict. Not someone who had the misfortune of loving you and being treated like a dog for it. 

[venusoppositesaturn]

There has never been a single apology you have given

That justified all the pain and destruction you caused in my life

All the nights spent crying and drowning myself in a pool of self pity and hatred and loneliness

To get rushed emails full of typos and half truths and excuses

Yet I always fell into your arms with hardly any hesitation

As if I had not bled onto my keyboard trying to get you to understand me just hours before

Typing line after line of vivid details of the abuse that I suffered at your hands

Reliving it all only to get the same canned responses

Like a sitcom laugh track

Getting louder and louder every time I settled for empty promises

Messages that should have fallen into the void and taken you with them.

[venusoppositesaturn]

enough

This is the last time my heart will break for something that was never there. 

I have wasted half my life daydreaming. Spending hours in the “what if” instead of making peace with the “never was.” 

I have held my breath looking for signs and nearly suffocated. Waiting endlessly for the ones that hurt me to transform into something they could never be. 

Someone that loved me the way I deserved. 

Instead of burning them at the stake in my mind, I held onto the scraps of their memory that I could make sense of. Hoping that the ache that I felt would hurt less if I just pretended that one day they would be sorry. Truly sorry. That they did what they did because they loved me too much. That they could not be the person I needed them to be because they weren’t ready. Putting my heart on ice until one day it would be needed by them again. 

But that “one day” has never happened. 

Instead, I have received endless streams of half-baked apologies from men who have no idea what it is like to truly feel. Men who are fundamentally broken, who think the empathy of others can be exploited over and over again until they need a new vessel to fill that endless void. Men who are less than men. Frightened insecure children fueled by the belief that for what they lacked in their youth the rest of the world must now suffer. Apologizing to themselves, not me, for their fractured souls. Just a string of empty words, self-admitted pity, to help them get better sleep at night. 

I should win an Olympic gold medal for the mental gymnastics I have done to justify their poor behavior. Using the deep understanding and empathy I have for pain and trauma to allow that pain and trauma to continue inside of me.  

A snake eating itself.

Self-assured destruction. 

I will never let that rot of pathetic self-awareness seep into me, the way they wield it as a weapon against others instead of seeing it as a chance to be better.

There is no use in being jaded or cynical. 

But there is also no more time left to mourn men who have never mourned me. 

I will continue to believe that people are capable of good. That everyone has goodness inside of them. 

But I will no longer make monsters into martyrs.

[venusoppositesaturn]

hell

Hell is being a woman unloved.

I have written so many different iterations of this. Over a decade of journal entries, google documents, blog posts full of my grief and fucking sorrow. Words upon words until my fingers fucking bled. 

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” 

But is it insane to want someone to be kind to me? Is it insane to want to feel valued? Is it insane to want to be treated like a human being instead of an object, just once? 

I keep trying to find signs of life through others. That if just one person loved me the way I loved them, truly understood me the way I understood them - then that would be my proof. That I would finally be human. I would be something more than just a warm body meant to be devoured and spat back out. But it never seems to change. I have watched sparks fizzle and fade more times than any person should. Yet I still try. 

“I’ll do things differently this time” 

“I’ll keep my distance this time”

“I won’t let myself get too close this time”

I have cut my hair, starved myself, dressed differently, spoken less, and listened more. The end result remains unchanged. 

I am not worthy of basic human kindness. 

I have found love through my friends and my family. It would be a lie to say that I have never experienced love in other forms. 

But my friends love me because they have no use for my body.

We are free to love each other for the sake of it. For who we are. 

But the moment I let another person touch my skin and feel the closeness of their body against mine, I suddenly disapppear. The warmth gradually runs cold with each night I spend side by side in their bed. Until there is nothing left. 

I am nothing more than the sheets and the blankets and the pillows. 

Ready to be replaced with something new. 

Something more attractive than me. 

Someone loveable. 

Someone real.

I have been reduced to this body that I am stuck in. This punishment that barely pays my bills. 

The constant aching reminder every time I look in the mirror, I am pretty enough to fuck but that is all I will ever be. That it is all I am capable of.

I have nothing but this endless love that cannot be put anywhere. I have no passions. No dreams. No goals. Nothing outside of staying alive for another day. 

Stay alive for your mother and your brother and your sister and your friends. 

But when you have no one to wake up to in the morning, and no one to come home to at night - is it freedom or loneliness? 

Every day I wake up with the hope that I will find something to drive me forward. Something other than this empty and pointless quest to find the one soul alive that wants to see beyond what my body can offer them. 

I hate everything about myself because it seems to be the only thing stopping me from living the life I once dreamed of.

Hell is being a woman unloved, and hell is real. 

[venusoppositesaturn]

untitled 12/16

I’m starting to feel like I’m getting close to the end. This seemingly endless quest to find ‘God’ 

Whatever ‘God’ could possibly be to me. 

I think ‘God’ was just feeling safe. I think that’s all I have ever sought out. Beyond the sick obsession with needing to be beautiful, rich, happy, or in love. I think under all of those layers I just so badly wanted to feel safe. Knowing that I could wake up in a home that wouldn’t be ripped away from me. That I could go through my day and if anything went wrong, my life wouldn’t change drastically. That I wouldn’t have to spend my nights in fear. Instead of counting all of the ways my life could go wrong, I could finally count fucking sheep. 

And I fucking tried. 

I feel like I have been standing outside a locked house for my entire life. From the window, I can see everything I have ever wanted. The walls are covered in so many items and memories I had to throw away because I never had the space for them or the funds. Furnished with pieces that I could only imagine owning in my dreams, knowing that I could never bother investing in such things because I would have to suffer the pain of losing them - the next time things fell apart. The house is sturdy. Unmoving. Always constant. Unaffected by the screaming chaos right outside the door. 

My fingers are raw and bloody, my bones ache, and my voice is gone. Every attempt to get inside the house ends in failure. No amount of therapy, yoga, hard work, or effort has ever brought me a key. With every attempt, a new spectator at the window - celebrating new wounds. “You always land on your feet,” they say. As if this inherent compulsion for survival is something to be celebrated, instead of seen as a life gone terribly wrong. Rotten at the core. They have already found a way inside the house. They have found their own room. Their ‘God.’ 

I wish I could say that having an acute sense of survival is something to celebrate. But it has not brought me any closer to ‘God.’ It has only dragged me closer to hell. I have made the mistake of trying to find ‘God’ in others - only to be ripped apart piece by piece until there is nothing left of me. I deliberately exploit myself with the hope that it will earn me a key inside the house. It never does. I am always told that I ask for too much. That the key, ‘God’, the house - it’s all too much. Finding comfort in verbal reassurance - too much. A loving gesture in the form of $5 flowers - too much. The simple intimacy of holding hands in public - too much. Hell is being taught that you are worth nothing but your body parts - knowing that soon even that will be worthless. 

I think something has shifted. Too many hands have passed over my body. Too many cycles have repeated the same lesson over and over: you will never earn entry to the house. You will never find ‘God.’ 

My life had been propelled forward by my fear of dying. I never stopped to consider that dying was the kindest thing I could have ever done for myself. 

I wonder if this is how my dad felt when he found out his cancer was terminal. Suddenly all the prayers, Sunday masses, and healthy lifestyle changes must have felt so fucking futile. So fucking pointless. Knowing you cannot control anything. The disease will spread and take you soon. 

What is the point of fighting when you know how it’s going to end? What’s the point of constant suffering and pain when you have tried everything you could to change things? 

For the people inside the house? The ones who have found their ‘God’? 

They will shuffle the state of the house for a bit. The paint might change, and the furniture might be replaced, but they will always be inside the house. Safe. 

The dull ache that comes with the passage of time from grief is so much kinder than the fucking oozing wound of living a life you don’t want to live. 

[venusoppositesaturn]

two way mirror. 10/27

I remember screaming at my mother until my chest caved in. “LISTEN TO ME. PLEASE. LISTEN. LISTEN. LISTEN” as if I was trapped behind some two-way mirror and she could not hear me, sitting on the TV room couch reading her book and feigning indifference. I could not tell you how many times this happened. Over things that could have had an incredible amount of significance or been something so inconsequential, so small. But the feeling was always the same. Please don’t leave me here. Please don’t let me die with my fear and my pain. Please don’t leave me alone. Please. See me. 

I didn’t realize then how that feeling would eat away at me for the rest of my life. Either figuratively or literally, screaming at people that I thought loved so deeply to see me. Watching them feign that same indifference as I carved away at myself limb from limb - hoping that at one point they would meet my gaze and understand. They would see how close I was to being swallowed whole by my emptiness and give me what I so desperately searched for. Love. Real love. Not the kind that ends when they tire of my body or my stories or my stormy moods. Not the love that comes with punishment. Not the love that ends in that deafening, silent, apathy.

I always used to proudly state that I have never been in love. That if I had, it was when I was 15 - with my first boyfriend. How in every man since I have chased that high of being awake at 4 am, talking about everything and nothing at all, and feeling like I had finally understood the world. But I’m not sure that I could even call that love. I think, deep down, that I am only capable of loving the idea of a person. The moment they turn to give me everything I ask for - that fear of being lost in the world is gone, and I am suddenly bored. Empty.

I dream of being excited to wake up next to someone. To start our days dancing in a kitchen and end them on the couch in comfortable silence. But that pit in my stomach is so large, so overwhelming. A fucking black hole that sucks up every good decision and turns every impulse into a race for survival. 

“Can I trust you?”

“I need to hurt you before you hurt me.”

“I don’t have the strength to let another person go.”  

I want to know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t need the weight of my absence to figure out how much I meant to them. Someone that loves me louder than the voices in my head that tell me when it’s time to run, or when to blow it all up.

I know that there is truth to loving yourself before you can effectively love someone else. I have experienced that first-hand. But as I peel back the layers of my skin and expose every part that needs to be fixed, the parts that scream at me the way I screamed at my mother - I can’t help but feel that empty pit. As I slowly build myself up - raise myself and love myself the way a child should be loved and cared for - that tightness in my throat still has a hold on me. The thought that I am building myself up for nothing. That I am too far gone. That I was never made to be anything but a lesson to men who will go on to be the person I needed them to be for someone else.

I want to love myself the way I dream of being loved. I want to wake up excited to spend the day with myself. I want to sit in comfortable silence with me. I want to see myself. I want to listen. I want to understand.

[venusoppositesaturn]

7/6/22

“i just don’t think i could ever love you”

“i don’t know how”

they say

as if love is a choice

but i know

i know

that love is a disease

and it grows

and it grows

until your eyes are swollen

and your head hurts

and your skin is hot

and you don’t think

you’ll ever see the sun again

because the love you had for them

burnt a hole inside your heart

only to be discarded 

like the rotting flesh that you are

waiting for the next man

to reanimate your corpse

[venusoppositesaturn]

4/3/22

i keep getting lost in you

the feeling of walking on the sun

and then sleeping on a freezing moon

do we feel the same things?

i said 

“i want to know what it feels like to be really loved by you”

and you said

“i know”

loving you is like walking in mist

sometimes warm and real

but always just out of grasp

is it just my skin you need?

i don’t want to be the void you fill

i want to be someone

anyone

to you

[venusoppositesaturn]

2/18/22

i never wanted the white picket fence. 

or the dog. 

i just wanted you to look at me,

the way I look at you. 

you measure my worth by the grooves of my skin.

the scars from my childhood,

that make you feel pity.

unfit to bear fruit.

just a beautiful face in a cracked mirror.

good enough to use,

but too broken to keep.

[venusoppositesaturn]

04/3/2020

I have never known warmth I have never felt a gentle hand Or skin against mine I have only known freezing indifference That love comes with conditions That selflessness is not free I have never been held Or kissed Or loved fully I am a transaction Expensive and expired I wonder what it is like to be loved back

[venusoppositesaturn]

12/24/2019

I know I’m still in your phone. A trapped piece of myself. A bad dream. I’m a trophy. One that you get as a child that you let rot on the shelf. A pat on the back for participating. So when the next girl asks about me you can show her with disappointment, “you’re much better looking than she is.” Like a modern teddy roosevelt, you mount the heads of ex lovers to your digital wall. I may have burned the earth of your existence but you will never get rid of me.

[venusoppositesaturn]

12/7/2019

We sit in steel The lights are too bright and burn my eyes I don’t look at you, my nose is red and running and numb I am hiding my face because I feel I’m not good enough I listen to you tell me that the love I have is a lie And that I “deserve more” Just like everyone else Insisting that fairy tales aren’t real “Save yourself” But I don’t need to be saved Your room is too warm The air is still like a casket I fuck you because I feel like I need to Insecure about the smell of my body and the spots on my skin You even turn the light off As if we both somehow know you’re physically superior to me You trace my spine feigning some form of intimacy “How big am I compared to the others” I give a less than honest answer to be kind, knowing that almost all my lovers never fit. “Where do I rank then compared to the others” You are not as kind “Don’t have any expectations with me” You say before you pull me down on you The sex is painful performance art My whole body covered in sweat from the pain Hours of cocaine and liquor threaten to rise to the surface Eventually you cum and there is release in more ways than one The smell in my nose is acrid and the pain in my throat feels like sand I am dizzy and cold and dead I needed this I think In the morning I leave without a word Knowing that you will not notice That no one will notice The hole in my heart continues to open “No new messages” I don’t need to save myself because there is no point in being saved

[venusoppositesaturn]

2/14/2019

the only men that have ever broken my heart are the men who became ghosts

how can you heal if you can never tell someone how you felt when they left