Monologue. People talk about red flags. I’m an expert.
By: Daniel John
Tags: Relationships, Codependency, Gay, Monologue, Advice

People talk about red flags. I’m an expert.

I think I stayed for as long as I did because I didn’t deserve better. I thought I could fix him. I thought that I could be the one. I mean I couldn’t fix anything else, but maybe I could fix him?

I have such vivid memories of being ten years old sitting next to my mother .

She would have whiskey. I think that’s why I could never bring myself to drink whiskey as an adult. Sometimes she’d have a beer, a bud.

She sat there and spoke to me about men. That my father couldn’t be trusted. That men couldn’t be trusted. That all men were liars. I mean she wasn’t so explicit in her words, but I received the message, loud and clear.

Looking back now, I wonder what the hell she was thinking? I mean he was a married man and it was the eighties. What did she think would happen? That he’d leave his wife? Wake up.

She sat there and told me what would need to happen when I was to marry a woman. Not if I was to marry. When.

“You’ve gotta hide money. Keep some hidden for when things go wrong. People change. People burn you. When things go south, you have to be ready to take care of yourself or they’ll take everything from you”. She spoke of when, not if.

To put that shit on a child. To make your own child your counsellor.

And I remember thinking “I can’t fix her”. At ten. At ten!

Little did I know that at 27, there would be this unconscious drive to try and fix her through him. Her words reverberated, although at the time I was blind to it. Aren’t we all in the beginning?

Men can’t be trusted. Men will cheat. Men will lie.

And I stayed. Even though I knew. There were no red flags. There were red flashing lights.

Alert! Alert! Alert! I chose to ignore them. It was convenient.

Was it me? What if I looked better? What if my hair was nicer? What if my body looked better? What if I spent more money on him? So many what ifs ….

And I used to wonder, what are those marks on his arm? Where did those bruises come from? Why is he acting so strange today?

Let me tell you. Your gut is always right.

I knew and I stayed. When so many people would have run a mile. But not me! All this time, I was in this fabricated reality where we were destined to be together forever. I mean, that’s what everyone said about us. So it must be true, right?

It’s profound what you can do to ignore a problem. What you will do to distract, disengage.

The desire I had to be with another man. To feel his arms, his grip. To feel the weight of another human lay on top of you. Something primal, almost. To feel wanted. To feel safe. To feel connected.

So you ask me what I’ve learned?

I’ve learned that the longer you stay in something that isn’t right, the more distrusting you become.

Now, I need you to listen because this is the most important part of what I am about to say. Okay?

If you stay, you will not be more distrustful of other people. You’ve already mastered that. You will lose trust in yourself. And that is dangerous.

It is dangerous because you can become the person you stay with. The person you’ve come to despise. Resent. When you lose trust in yourself, you will do what they did because if you do that, surely that makes you just as bad as them.Right?

I have learned that we are not good or bad. We are who we are. And we have the capacity to be both.

I am telling you this because you deserve more. I deserve more. We deserve more. Don’t you think?