You didn’t love me enough,

Did you?

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • proclaim it to the world.
  • celebrate it in front of everyone.
  • write it on your Instagram. 

As in,

You just accepted it all:

  • whatever I said I wanted.
  • the ten thousand ‘I’m fine’s.
  • the self-deprecation.

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • find my ring.
  • wear wedding bands.
  • ask me to change my name. 

As in,

There were a million other things more important to you:

  • your mother’s opinion.
  • your career.
  • religion.

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • wonder why I wasn’t excited.  
  • worry why I didn’t want to try on my wedding dress every single night. 
  • write vows to me.

As in,

It never crossed your mind to:

  • invite my siblings.
  • look at my 8-year-old wedding plans in my diary.
  • love me how I needed to be loved.

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • refuse their conditions.
  • redesign an heirloom.
  • want more for me.

As in,

I wasn’t enough:

  • polite social behaviour. 
  • to make a cross-country trip for.
  • for you.

As in,

I was too much:

  • feeling.
  • thinking.
  • a million planets, when you weren’t even allowed the world.

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • let me say what I wanted.
  • post what I wanted.
  • be what I wanted.

As in,

You weren’t proud of everything I was:

  • moonwalking during a square dance.
  • pouring blood on a sage bush.
  • addicted to the way people made me feel.

As in,

You didn’t love me enough to:

  • accept me as I was.
  • accept me as I could have been.
  • accept me for all the ways I wanted to grow.

As in,

I know it isn’t fair of me to ask you to:

  • want more for me.
  • want more for me.
  • want more for me.

As in:

I think I was just a solution to a problem

and

I waited a million knife-edge moments to hear you tell them that I was worth more to you than that. That it wouldn’t be this way. That I meant more to you than them. 

You accepted it, whatever I said I wanted, when what I really wanted was for you to not accept this, not for me.

I know it isn’t fair. To want you to want more for me. 

To want more for me.

But I looked to you, to tell me who I was, what I was, what I meant to you, what I was worth.

And I don’t think you ever loved me enough,

did you?

Because you didn’t love me more than you hated cleaning the kitchen. 

Because you didn’t love me more than you didn’t want to wake up before me to make a cup of coffee. 

And,

If I don’t fundamentally believe I’m worth a surprise hen’s party; two wedding dresses; a cup of coffee:

How am I supposed to believe I’m worth the dream? 

Because you didn’t love me enough to ask me to stay.

And I know that I’m too much. 

And I know that I live for the fire and the rain and the fireworks and the winds that blow gales through my hair. 

And I know that I feel it too much. That I drink too much. That I think too much. Dance too much. Love too much. 

And I know that I break my own heart one thousand times a day,

And we never exchanged vows, our words outlining what being married meant to us.

And we never exchanged rings, our symbols of what being married meant to us. 

And you never once told me it was an honour to be my husband. 

And so I still don’t know: 

did it mean anything to us?