Remember why

I sometimes wonder how this will happen. How I will be strong enough to stand for myself, by myself, and allow myself to accept better - to believe I deserve better and to accept that.

It's difficult when I am hurting and could use comfort.

I forget that what is being offered is not comfort - it is assuaging of his ego. For, upon closer examination, I can say that the way he loved me and the way I needed to be loved - deserved to be loved - were not the same.

And that, more than anything else, is why I suffer in silence and refuse to respond. Because if he knows I am weak right now, I shall be set upon... And we will hate each other in the morning.

I would rather he remember that he loved me once. And that, with my whole heart, I loved him well when we were together. Even knowing that his love had faded into complacency, that I would never hold that coveted place in his heart and home, I refused to and refuse to love him less.

So I will lay here. And not smile because it is not a smiling matter to take a heart and set it aside. I will lay here.

And remember why.

L.