“It’s easier this time”

“It’s easier this time.”

Written in a text, yet these words ring through my ears every, single day.  Questions berate my mind at random.  Easier this time how?  Easier from all the other times we’d both reached a point to calling it quits, only to come back to each other hours later? Or easier compared to the other relationships he’d walked away from?

I’m so angry.  I don’t know what it is that is making me so angry lately, but I know I can hardly handle it when well-intentioned people tell me what I deserve.  It makes me angry, and I don’t know how to respond, when people tell me that I’m full of talent and a force to be reckoned with.

In part, I feel a temptation to step toward their comments and believe them.  And then, like a wet blanket, the reality of life snuffs out that little spark of belief.  Then, like a wave, experience smacks me in the face.

If I am so wonderful, then why in the hell is it possible for two men in my lifetime to ask me to marry them only to make walking away from me “easy” to do? One didn’t even say goodbye.  He just slipped away without a word, and left me there to make sense of the pieces.  Then this time, just before sliding off the ring, never to place it on my hand again, I read the words, “it’s easier this time.”

Angry, warm, tears fill my eyes and spill out over my pillow, my desk, my gosh darn toilet paper.  Why in the hell did I read the books, listen to the sermons, and pour my heart and soul – even at the cost of my own mental strength – into not only showing someone my whole self, but to also make every effort to be what they needed as well?

I don’t know, but I do know is this much.  I’ve thrown away the books.  I’m done with the self-help.  I can’t listen to the sermons.  I can barely mutter words when I bow my head.

Anyone can call me that I am strong, assertive, or brave for standing up for myself.  Most of the time though, all I feel is angry.

Someone, please tell me, why it was so easy.