False Hearts and False Dichotomies

They came for her merely because they had no one, and they had no one for a reason. It was not an active choice. They were ugly and womanizing, or wanting to womanize, vain, false, immoral, perverted, grasping at whomever they felt was the easiest to control. Their interest in her could not be real, as they did not know her, and she did not know them. She only knew their facades, and they only knew hers. She only knew that they were affiliated, even marginally, with her infancy, in which she was trapped, the past she could not allow herself to abandon for better, incapable of venturing away from those who told her what to do, what to think. So she entertained them, limited her choices to the scavengers who presented themselves. She would not follow her heart, nor even listen to it, telling herself that she had to choose between them and telling herself that was good. It was not. It was self-destructive, a formula for misery. But she could not bring herself to find it in her heart to reach out to what she had erred in casting away. She could not forgive nor embrace he whom she had unjustifiably destroyed in her petulance and for them. Her cage would not let her, and she always listened to her cage. So she would do what she always did, let them into her life, let them too near her without letting herself see their motives. She would not think about when they had appeared or the trauma she had experienced that was leading her to more, with them. She would not heal her heart by repairing what needed repair. She would not let herself be herself for fear of judgment. She had given her feelings away more than once to him whom she had shamed, though she should have felt her own shame for it, but she would not, could not, follow a path not set for her by others. So she let the scavengers control her life, without even realizing she was, those whom she should not have looked twice at, never entertained. And she would choose from them, fearful of being alone the rest of her life, when what would have made her happy was in arm’s reach, if only she could have allowed herself to stop listening to her past, a past that had given her nothing in love but pain. She would not step away and experience what awaited her elsewhere, with one who had loved her true. She would do as she always had. She would fake it. She would pretend until she believed that they made her happy, when they’d never had any intention but to make themselves happy by taking advantage. she would only allow herself to see the superficial benefits. There was a reason they came when they did, and there was a reason they were ugly. But she would blind herself to it all and let them in, when she, inside, knew she did not want them and they did not really want her … just anyone.