For some time now I’ve been pursuing clarity on what I would and would not accept in all my relationships. I bade adieu to my once accepting fawning and codependency relationship of my last couple of decades of my life in order to live my life for myself and be lustrious and notable to others. I decided to choose only to be in healthy relationships and manifest all the glories of my dreams by being present and letting my true colors shine through. I do not tolerate lying and deceit anymore. The enduring years felt more like a weighty fist compressing and constricting my heart as he always felt the need to defend his deeds and somehow, I allowed for those ingrained patterns to root into my spirit as if they were a part of me never to be secernated. What a relief to discover that the aches that I grew to believe were mine, were only a piece of me. I choose life and the pursuit of happiness…I am in control of myself not an imposing man who manipulates with such ease from others to offer him constant attention. Like a shopkeeper who foists shoddy souvenirs on unsuspecting tourist, I embraced him like a keepsake only to discover the imposture for what he really is decades later. A master shopkeeper indeed, yet a true master feels it in his heart. His heart remains empty and since you can only fight the way you practice, his entire system of tactics has collapsed and all that is left is a perfidious and loveless vessel. Why else the consistent need to defend or attack? There is no conviction to what he professes to be and I am exhausted of the pity party, not to mention the lack of action after every falsifying promise which shows me otherwise. I don’t need the kind of love that is draining. I choose to no longer tolerate deflecting blame onto me nor anymore gaslighting. I choose to no longer allow abusive, manipulative, deceitful behavior. I am no longer engaging with people who will not acknowledge their abusive treatment of me or who did not seek to amend their behavior and ask for forgiveness. A human mind can only take so much; you either remain quiet or you go mad. I choose another direction to save myself and to find my divined path. I choose to stand up to my truth, my whole existence. I will set up and maintain my boundaries so that my children will be empowered to do the same with their chosen relationships. I choose to create new and break the generational patterns handed down to me. I choose to let projections go and not look back to the wasteland from which I emancipated myself from. I am rebirthing full of love, truth and integrity…never will I be conquered again. This legacy I leave onto my children…it’s the most valuable gift I could bequeath along with showing them that I love and honor every human part of me without any external validation. As challenging as it is to acknowledge the betrayal of myself and my needs which is to deny many parts of who I am in this partnership, it served a purpose. While it took me sometime ever after, sans the happily, I now understand that all the women and the thorned and entangled stories that were deliberately crafted about them were not perpetrators but fallen victims like myself. Each incident, and there were many, was merely a mirror to be held in front of my face to show me my growth and self-exploration rather than a space to re-enact trauma dynamics. I’m embarking on the journey where I start to meet my own needs, place boundaries and be able to comfortably express myself. His can be too, if only he comes to terms to understand that his past is who he is and by continually bringing it into the present affixes him to that will that vacuously deprives his spirit, a will that won’t allow him to discover a better version of himself and therefore a better reality for himself and all that surrounds him. I choose, moving forward, to have a mature and autonomous relationship where I can meet myself and all other people with curiosity, authentic love and freedom. This coerced entanglement gnawed its way to the core with too much suffering combined with very little empathy. For the sake of all, it’s best to embark on this bifurcation at this juncture and find our own journey of healing. My path will always offer love, from a distance albeit. I believe it was Brené Brown that said the most compassionate people have the most boundaries…it’s time for me to set my boundaries once and for all and never give up the search for sacredness. It’s most likely going to be a bumpy road…no one grows through complacency…it takes effort, it takes pain to release pain. Courage to us all who embark on this healing journey. Cheers to growth, cheers to our evolution and returning home to that rightful space among all that is.