Personal Narrative: I Declare You Over A Million Times

“I could have fucked you over a million times” he says, voice booming. His chest is puffed forward and he bangs his fist against it as he talks. His statement is more amusing than enlightening, mostly because he has confused a testament of my faith in him, as a credit to his own honor. As if in some way my strength is his, as if my vulnerability was a silly mistake. To him, I am another naive woman, to deluded to have ever consciously allowed someone so close to my heart. A million times he could have fucked me over! He says it like I am to stupid to have noticed the power he wielded. He doesn't realize that this power, that he lords over me, is my own; power that I gave willingly. I don't bother to explain this to him, he is on a roll and in any case he could not understand. In his mind, this would only prove me more silly than he

But when he says this I do not feel love, but betrayal. I think of the battlefield that he declares the world to be, and I note that it is not the world fighting against me, but him. The greatest tests have been to love him, through his own demons, his own diseases. I bite into my cheek, so as not to say again. That he would never fuck me over again, It is what he means so I do not say it. Instead, I think of my mother and her strength, her magic. I try to embody it, to wash myself in it, to see this man who has declared war on love and heal him. I try and allow her teachings to possess me, and then allow my spirit to possess his. To show him, the power of the love he has no belief in. To allow him to see the world through my eyes, one that does not see a battlefield to thrash against, but an ocean that flows peacefully, one that would carry me, carry us if we only let it. I do not give up on him, though sometimes I want to, I love him. I love him as he learns to love himself, that is my