Betrayal. The word sounds so ominous, feels so heavy as it carries the weight of the grandest disappointments, disillusionments, and disconnection. The pain is staggering. It stays staggering for years, stretching it seems into eternity. Betrayal causes a sharp break between the before times and the after times. It creates change that can swallow you whole.

Yet. I love her. Still. I love her. I find grace and compassion and understanding for her. I hold space for her even as her behavior makes that choice feel insane.

This is my truth. My stories tell me that for me to be worthy, I must accept those I love where they are, or how can I expect to love me where I am?

In a different timeline, we are happy together. In a different place, we hold space for the trauma, but we don’t allow it to sink us. But that time and that place are not now and not here. Here and now, there is only the pain, the loss, and the grief.

Ultimately, I know that I am in love with a person that does not exist. She wears her face, she carries her scent, but she is not her. She is made of both memory and fantasy, of hopes and dreams and desires. She is a collage, held together in my heart and in my mind, taking up space, taking my breath away, but still not truly real. She is equal parts of what she said she’d be and what I thought she was, but none of those things were her.

In the end, the ultimate betrayal was my betrayal of myself.