And I… resented it.  It wasn’t love.  It was a forced expression of something that he didn’t feel.  He was duped.  Isn’t love meant to be a feeling?  A driving force that carries you along – not something that you must carry?

That’s what I wanted to believe love was.  I wanted his whole heart and devotion without him having to try.  I wanted him to feel an ocean of emotion every time he saw my face.  And so I said goodbye.  I said it wasn’t working.  I said all of those forced things that you express when it isn’t what you really feel.

Later I knew that it was I who was hollow.  I believed in something that didn’t belong to me.  What I had made love out to be – what I thought I wanted to believe in – was something I was subjected to, that I could not control.  It made me vulnerable, and lonely, and uncertain.  It became my slavedriver and it ruled my life.  I wasn’t free to make decisions about relationships or about feelings.  The duped one was me.

And I was alone.