Confessions of a libra

Coming Home

Credit: Here

20.05.25

She went back to her ex. My biggest fear, manifested. I had been patient. I had wanted her for so long. We were friends since primary school. I got to see her in all her awkward phases. I was there when she drank her first lick of alcohol. I was there when she had her first kiss. I was even there when she needed to make runs for the morning after pill. I’ve held her hair over many a sink. I have cuddled her, platonically I told myself. But when the opportunity came for me I took it. I would have been stupid not to, any guy would want a girl like her. She’s soft, she’s funny and she’s that perfect girl next door type that I adore.

There’s always been incongruence if I was honest with myself. She wasn’t always honest. I had seen (and heard) stories about her cheating. I had seen her cry over these men and then be sleeping with the next one soon after. I believed her when she told me that I wasn’t like the other men. The ones who used her. She looked at me that day that she came over with a softness I felt she had only reserved for her romantic partners. Finally, I thought. She sees me now. She sees the man I am. Patient. Loving. Kind.

Then the message came. The silence. The emotional distance. She went back to the man she cried in my arms about. The one who she whispered in my ear could never hold a candle to me. Her betrayal incapacitated me like a bullet through the heart. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see. I spent days in a haze. Called off work, drank too much, punched my knuckles into oblivion. Then walked around like a zombie, acting out my life. Everything became dull, numb.

It started slowly, the seed of hope. It began with a barista making a passing comment. Something about how a handsome man like myself wouldn’t struggle to get a partner. I felt the rejection flare up in my body like a whip. The instinctual reaction to reject. If I had been so worthy, I wouldn’t have lost the one woman I had truly wanted. Not to her dickhead of an ex. But the seed was planted. I stared at myself in the mirror one day, and wondered if I’d really seen myself. Had I allowed myself to flourish in a way that allowed people to see me the way I wanted to be seen? Could more women see me the way that barista did?

It started with a spontaneous visit to the barber shop one day. I put my hands up and told the barber I had no sense of style, but I was willing to learn what suits me. He gave me a low taper face and explained the science behind why it worked for me. I I watched a few videos online from men who I admired. I saw how they put themselves together and wondered what changes I could make for myself. I posted a photo in my new cut and outfit. She left me fire emoji’s and I felt my heart constrict. A flicker of a excitement but a hell of a lot more dread. She sent me a message on Instagram and I sat on the reply for days. I may have drunk a whole wine bottle to myself I’m not sure.

I wished I had made more female friends outside of her. But the few women who did get close to me she never liked. A little voice in me wondered if that was by design but I squashed it down. There’s no way the woman that I’ve looked up to, in her innocent gaze and sexual confidence would have sabotaged me. Right? While scrolling through a Tiktok I came across a woman talking about the signs of manipulation in relationships. I stayed to dispute the premise that all men are bad. But I stayed when I realised she was describing the way my best friend had treated me. My temporary girlfriend. My blood ran cold.

Slowly but surely I started making changes. First from a place of curiosity. Then from a place of momentum. I updated my wardrobe for the first time in 3 years. I started going to places that always made her uncomfortable. Curiosities I had expressed in the safety of our friendship before I had clocked her controlling tendencies. I did make a new friend in that barista. We went out for dumplings one time and were planning to visit a convention together in a few months time.

The ex started contacting more often, having never responded to her Instagram. The fog she had placed under me had begun to lift. I didn’t want to be poisoned. I didn’t want to be sucked back into the drama and be energetically syphoned. I was finally choosing myself. Not to show her, but to show me. To prove to me that I deserved better. And so the world opened up…