The cycle of broken

What is it like
with a father that brings daddy issues
and a mother that has daddy issues?

What is it like
when the patterns repeat themselves
the moment I met him —
dark skin, six feet,
perfect height for our lips to meet?

Art student, of course.
Love is an art after all.
I needed someone skilled at it,
someone to make my heart beat —
Tum tum ke,
like the drum he plays.
So you know… he’s skilled with his hands too.

We were young.
I was far younger, but
we. were. young.
Couldn’t fathom the flaws.
Both made from broken glass —
I mean homes.
We watched ourselves shatter
each other’s eyes as a reflection.

And when winter came,
when push came to shove,
the boy once innocent, caring, and free
turned into a man —
beaten deeper and deeper into his shell
and into vices.
“It’s the society,” he says.
But part of it was his choices,
choices born of pain,
born of the need not to repeat the same mistakes,
yet looking more and more like the patterns.

And you ask where I come in?
Well… I was the loyal, carefree, innocent girlfriend —
the one who shared her thoughts and wounds
with the only person who made her feel safe.
The one who defied all odds and broke the rules
to be with him.

The one who stood and watched him change…
fall deeper and deeper into an abyss
she all too painfully recognised.
Sinking deeper and deeper.
She took off her life jacket to save him,
only to watch it drift away at sea.
Now they were both sinking.
She hid her wounds
as the empath absorbed his.
The fact that he wouldn’t open up,
wouldn’t be saved,
cut her deeper, right at the heart.

So deep that when he finally came back,
she was too broken, too drained,
drifted too far into the deep end
to feel excited by his return.

There was a change my mother often spoke of —
from before she married my father to after.
The change seemed all too familiar
when I looked at his face.
It seemed we had both aged a couple years.
I smiled.
The patterns I had always feared
had begun to manifest.

He smiled back depressingly,
seeing the hurt in my eyes,
knowing all too well I was losing the will to wait —
wait for our love,
wait for the make-up and promises that never came,
wait and wait and wait.

A broken pot cannot heal a broken pot.
So I decided to leave.
I swept up what was left of my heart
and my all-too-kind, innocent nature.
Picked up my fears —
my mother’s words about my father echoing in my ears.
They never got married, you know.
So our similarities begin to show.

I turned those fears into armour.
Mi amor,
let me be the one to hide from love
and break the pattern.