YOUR QUIET NEMESIS - by Xallyheart

Part 1You never rushed me. That was the first, fatal gift. You were a tide, content to take years to erode the cliffs of my caution. You asked a question on a Tuesday and waited until Friday for my true answer. You texted good morning, and goodnight, with the patient rhythm of a monk in prayer. You didn’t bombard you settled. Around me. Within me. I mistook your pace for depth.I began to live in the spaces between your attentions. The hours between a text and a reply became my cathedral. I built whole futures in that silence. You made waiting feel holy. I fell in love with your timing the sure, steady pull of you. I fell in love with the idea that a person like you calm, measured, sure could want a storm like me. You’d listen to my frantic, over-spilling words and say, “Breathe.” And I would. For you, I became still. You became my quiet place. I showed you the shattered, sharp-edged pieces of myself. You didn’t flinch. You held them, turned them over in the light, and said, “I see you.” You made a mosaic of my broken bits and called it art. Called it enough. You took your time learning the map of me. You wove my past into your present with such gentle hands, I never felt the stitches. I didn’t just fall. I laid myself down on the altar of your calm. I was building a forever in the blueprint of your maybe. I planted my entire soul in the soil of your attention, believing it was the deepest, richest earth. I was so busy falling in love with the safety of your slowness, I never asked what you were slowly, patiently, preparing me for. It wasn't a fall. It was a long, serene, trusting descent through empty air. What grew was not a quiet garden. It was a fever. A glorious, mind devouring ecstasy..I called it devotion.I called it destiny. I built a religion from your silences. I would send a message of breathless, tender thought and the waiting would begin. That waiting was my sacred ritual. The minutes stretched, a sweet and private agony. I would lay my phone down like an offering, my heart a wild, caged thing against my ribs. The moment it lit up with your name was a sacrament. A tiny resurrection. My pulse became a frantic choir, a drumbeat synced only to the rhythm of your attention. I began to want you with a hunger that changed me from the inside out. It was a deep, old ache, hollowing out beneath my ribs that only the sound of your notification could fill. The world lost its color unless it was filtered through you. A song was only good if I could imagine you hearing it. The sky was only beautiful because I could tell you about it. I was not living a life; I was collecting artifacts to lay at your feet. I decoded your words, your emojis, the pauses between your texts, with the desperate precision of an archaeologist reading runes. I found proof of your love in a period. I found promises in your haste. I was starving, and I made a five-course banquet from your crumbs. I loved loving you. It was the most profound purpose I had ever been given. This was my holy all. But the silence began to change. It was no longer sweet. The minutes hardened into hours. My messages those tender, vital parts of me would launch into the void and dissolve. Delivered. Read. Then, nothing. A silence so absolute it had a weight. It pressed on my lungs. I became a keeper of your indifference. I documented it. 9:14 AM: Sent a joke about the rain. 3:47 PM: Still unread. 11:02 PM: Goodnight, I guess. And then, the most cruel math when I finally tried to mirror your energy, when I let your “what’s up” sit for an hour because my own heart was a bruise, your response was immediate. A cold ? A seething “Never mind.” The whiplash was a dizziness that made the room spin.. The rule was carved into me: my attention was your oxygen. Yours was a favor I should weep to receive, You made my need feel like a grotesque, demanding thing, I text and it stays for hours, but when I reciprocate you get angry. Oh, how much I love you, too much for all this. The love I built wasn’t just ignored. It was being made ridiculous. But I stayed. Because the cathedral I’d built in my soul was so beautiful, and the idea that it was built on empty air was a truth too shattering to face. I’m not forcing myself to stay I just became your nemesis. Then, you called me by the wrong name. It wasn't a pet name. It wasn't a tease. It was their name. Someone else’s. A name that belonged to a ghost from your past, or a shadow from your present. A name that was not, and had never been, mine. It slipped out so easily. In the middle of a story, your eyes slightly glazed, you said it. That other syllable. That foreign sound. In an instant, I was not there. I was a stand-in. A body double. A warm seat filler for the person you were actually thinking of, actually seeing. Every touch, every secret, every whispered promise in the dark had it ever been meant for me? Or had I simply been the closest available silhouette to the one you truly wanted? I tried to laugh. A brittle, breaking sound. “Who’s that?” You shrugged, a flicker of annoyance crossing your face at my disruption. “No one. A mistake. You know what I meant.” But I did know. For the first time, I knew exactly what you meant. I meant so little, I wasn't even singular. I was interchangeable. Oh, I forgot you called me another name. The final, absolute erasure came later. We were talking about the future. A vague, golden someday. And you said it. The ultimate, unthinking confession. “When I’m with the right person, I guess…” The world went crystalline. Sharp, clear, and utterly dead. The right person. Three syllables. A casual, unthinking confession. The entire narrative of my life collapsed into a single, pathetic sentence. I was not the right person. I was the current person. The convenient placeholder. All of it the sacraments, the cravings had been a performance for an audience of one.The pain was not a heartbreak. It was an un becoming. What rises from the ashes of a self immolated is not a phoenix. It is a nemesis...........

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