Toxic: A Collection of Poetry

Preface.

I've been wanting for a while now, to share some poetry I wrote about someone, a man, that has been mistreating me for a while now and ironically I haven't felt safe enough to 'share' due to the repercussions and how he may react, which is honestly ironic; given the fact that he's currently going through another period where he ghosts me and leaves me on read.

Ghosting is just one form of some of the manipulative, psychological mind games he plays on a loop, for approximately 3 month chunks. It's hard confronting yourself to take off the rose tinted glasses and seeing someone for who they truly are and how they treat you. It's such a punch in the gut.

I'm realising I'm very much not alone in this and I find it therapeutic talking about it. I don't see why I should continue to censor myself when this man in my life clearly does not give a shit about me but only how people see him, and I got sick of defending him and covering for him.

I have been blindsided by a lot of his actions, that never matched his words, completely throwing me off-guard all the time. I can't ignore how manipulative it is after about 5 years give or take, of his behaviour continually reoccurring and treating me like shit. I only recently realised within the past few months, how toxic and awful this man has continuously treat me: he doesn't care how it makes me feel-he only cares if I tell people how he treats me because it ruins the perfect image of him. If you have to remind me you're a 'nice guy', when gaslighting/manipulating me and trying to clear your name/only thinking about yourself, chances are, you're not a fucking nice guy. I have gone through his repetitive actions/patterns of behaviour where normally we talk daily/every day and then...boom...nothing...radio silence...

He'd give no warning, just complete silence. Truly, the emotional unavailability of this man makes him almost a stranger to me. I can count on one hand the things I've learnt about him over the past four years. Whenever I confronted his behaviour I got some bullshit excuse of how 'it's just a coincidence'. No. I remember specifically, talking to him about patterns of his behaviour how it's not 'just a coincidence'. I have put up with manipulative, toxic and borderline mentally abusive shit for years, as you can tell, I'm not dealing with it anymore.

He's currently so busy actively ignoring me/punishing me/whatever, that when he comes back to pretend like nothing happened and like he hasn't treat me like shit, he's gonna get a rude awakening. I'm sick and tired of defending this man that my mutual friends know, but I know him on a more intimate level.

I had to figure out a way to work through this shit in a healthy-ish way, that has required minimal effort yet offered maximum gratification. I can't bring myself to rehash what happened over the duration of 5 years, in a long and detailed account without emotionally draining me. I needed to get my feelings onto a page bluntly enough to offer relief yet briefly enough for me to escape unscathed. Sometimes, I write early in the morning after I wake up, before my mind reels with flashbacks; other times during the day when the mood struck or late at night when I'm too upset to sleep. Some of the poems are fuelled by unmitigated rage, anger and betrayal. Writing poems has helped me breathe again. Most importantly, I've found my voice again, which I felt was taken from me. I am silenced no more.

It feels scary and vulnerable as hell to share my poems. I am absolutely terrified, especially of the 'what if's'. 'What if he sees my poems?' 'What if he blocks me?' (It seems like he already has blocked me on social media to punish me with more mind games.) 'What if he gets angry with me?' That's nothing new, he's done that before. 'What if he gets upset? Lmao, so he can gaslight me into submission to not talk about how he's been treating me? No, thank you.
A part of me doesn't want to completely lose him, ironically he'll say I should've communicated how I felt. How can I when he's unresponsive and unavailable? I've tried to communicate. I've fucking tried. This grown ass man will attempt to manipulate and mould me by ghosting/ignoring/punishing/me for months. I'm breaking the cycle. We're about two months into this round, and I'm not pandering to him when he gets back. I miss the tiny parts of him that were nice; but the fact that I was asking myself nightly, 'ooh I wonder if tonight he'll be sweet/nice to me', 'oh, that's a shame maybe tomorrow/next week/next month'. Bare minimum shit. So yeah no more censoring my experience. He's had more than enough time to talk to me and communicate & clearly he doesn't want to do that.

So I'm not silencing myself anymore. I'm not defending him. I'm not censoring myself. What I write will be raw and rough. I will unapologetically be sharing the reality of the past, almost seven years, so I can feel the emotions, grieve & move on...